To Rise Again at a Decent Hour: A Novel

by Joshua Ferris

  “Do you know the men he stands in front of during service?” she asked him. “Some of them just barely made it out of Europe before the Nazis marched in. One of them survived the camps. These are people who remember their villages being attacked just because they were Jews. My father came here from Kiev—”

  “I know he came here from Kiev.”

  “He saw things happen to his family—to his father, to his uncles. He was just a boy. You know the history, Grant, but they’ve lived it.”

  “That shouldn’t disqualify me.”

  “In the eyes of my father and the men of his congregation, it does.”

  “And in your eyes?”

  “In my eyes, no,” she said. “We’ll go to Israel. We’ll raise a family.”

  “But lose the one you have?”

  “What does it matter if we have our own?”

  “No invitation to your house,” he said. “No Shabbat. No Seders. No holidays with your aunts and uncles. No place for me at Shalom B’nai Israel.”

  “I know him,” she said. “He won’t allow it.”

  “What’s it all been for, then,” he asked, “if we don’t have that?”

  She wasn’t at all sure what he meant, and it confused her. Was he worried about her losing her family, or about it being lost, somehow, to him? But how could he lose something he never had? Aside from two complicit cousins, he’d never met any of them.

  Then one afternoon Rabbi Mendelsohn appeared outside the house on the corner, rang the bell, and asked to see his daughter.

  Despite the time they had had to prepare for the confrontation, neither of them was ready. Her father asked Mirav to introduce him to the young man who’d answered the door. Then he asked the young man if his parents were at home.

  “My parents live in New York, sir,” he said.

  “You live here alone?”

  He nodded.

  “Would you be kind enough to invite me in?”

  “Of course.”

  Osher Mendelsohn stood in the foyer and complimented the boy on the house. He gave no indication of what he thought of its spare interior or of the Chagall that hung conspicuously from the living room wall. They watched silently as he peered into the room with the fireplace, at the beanbag and the books on the floor.

  “Do you mind if we sit down?” asked the rabbi.

  “Only the two of us, sir? Or Mirav as well?”

  “Would you care to join us, young lady?”

  “If you want me to, Papa.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I think you should.”

  They had a seat at the new dining room table while Grant Arthur raced off to the kitchen. He wanted to offer the rabbi a variety of things to drink. If he knew anything as intimately as Mirav knew the traditional women’s prayer at candle lighting, it was how to host a party. That was his inheritance, the legacy given him by his parents. But there was only a little milk in the fridge. So he left the house through the back door and ran down to the grocery that belonged to the rabbi’s wife’s brother, where he bought three kinds of juice, two kinds of soda, and tea and coffee. But on his run home he found that the back gate had fallen shut, locking him out, and he had to enter through the front door, to the surprise of Mirav and her father, who were sitting in silence, waiting for him to return from the kitchen. He excused himself once more, unpacked the groceries, and returned to the doorway to ask what they would have to drink. Mirav wanted nothing, and her father asked only for a glass of water.

  “I understand,” the rabbi began, after Grant Arthur had settled down at the head of the table he had purchased for his family, the rabbi to the right of him, Mirav to his left, “that you know Rabbi Youklus of Anshe Emes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Rabbi Youklus tells me that you want to be a Jew.”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “A very bright young man, says Rabbi Youklus. Maybe even a genius. He was very impressed by you.”

  “I have devoted myself day and night to the study of Judaism, sir. I plan to continue to do so. I hope to live up to the Jewish scholars I admire the most. Rabbi Akiva, Spinoza.”

  “A noble thing.”

  “I’ve learned some Hebrew, and I study Torah at least six hours a day. And my favorite poet is Heinrich Heine. He wasn’t a good Jew, but he wrote lovely verses.”

  “I also understand,” said the rabbi, “that you have legally changed your name, is that correct? I believe Rabbi Blomberg of Yad Avraham told me that.”

  “I’m in the process of doing so right now, Rabbi Mendelsohn.”

  “And who are you studying with now?”

  “Rabbi Rotblatt, sir. Of Temple Israel.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s right. Rabbi Rotblatt, who tells me that you wish to go to seminary after your conversion is complete.”

  “Yes, sir, I do. I hope to be a rabbi,” he said, “like yourself.”

  “A noble thing,” repeated the rabbi. He took a sip of his water and placed the glass back on the table. “This is a very nice table,” he said, pausing a moment to admire it.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And the painting on your wall, that is a fine reproduction.”

  “Oh, that isn’t a reproduction, sir.”

  The rabbi lingered on it before withdrawing his eyes.

  “Do you wish to marry my daughter?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “I wonder,” he said, “if you would mind me asking you a question or two about your studies—not to interrogate you, I hope you understand. We are in your house, and I have no wish to be rude to you in your own home. I only want to know a little of what you know, considering that you would like to join my family.”

  “You may ask me anything,” he said.

  “Do you know what a Seder is?”

  “The Seder is the major ritual of Pesah, or Passover, when we commemorate the Exodus from Egypt and mark the start of the covenant between God and the Jewish people.”

  “Have you been to a Seder?”

  “I should also add that the word ‘Seder’ means ‘order,’ and this order, or ritual, is to be found in the Haggadah, or ‘telling.’ I have only been to one Seder, sir, at the invitation of Rabbi Greenberg, and it was a transformative experience.”

  “Rabbi Greenberg?”

  “Of Temple Sinai, in Long Beach.”

  “Rabbi Greenberg I don’t know,” said the rabbi.

  “He was kind enough to invite me to my first Seder,” he said. “I wish I could convey to you even a portion of what it meant to me.”

  “And may I ask you about the holiday of Shavuot, and what, if anything, it means to you?”

  “Shavuot marks the end of the Counting of Omer, which begins at the end of Passover and lasts for seven weeks. It commemorates the Revelation at Sinai, when God bestowed the miracle of the Torah upon the Jewish people and marked them forever as His Chosen Ones. I participated in an overnight study session during Shavuot this year. It was meant to demonstrate our love and embrace of Torah, and was one of the most moving experiences of my life.”

  “Was that also with Rabbi Greenberg?”

  “No, sir,” he said. “That was with Rabbi Maddox.”

  “You have come to know quite a few rabbis,” said the rabbi.

  “Yes, sir, I have.”

  Rabbi Mendelsohn sat back in his chair. “I wonder if I can ask you just one more question.”

  “Yes, sir, of course.”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  Never would it have occurred to Mirav to ask him that. He had transformed himself into a Jew. What for, if not God?

  “No, sir, I do not,” he said.

  “You don’t?” she said.

  “You are an atheist,” said the rabbi, “is that correct?”

  “Is that what Rabbi Youklus told you?”

  “Youklus,” he said, “Blomberg, Rotblatt, Maddox, Repulski. None of them could recommend you to a Beth Din because you do not believe in God. If you did, you w
ould be a Jew by now, and on your way to seminary.”

  He was quiet. Through the long silence they stared at each other.

  “How can you believe in God, sir,” he asked the rabbi, “knowing the history of your people as you do?”

  “The history of my people is their struggle to keep God’s covenant,” said the rabbi. “Without Him, we are nothing.”

  “God is what got you into this mess.”

  “God is my every breath,” the older man said, losing the poise he had maintained throughout the conversation until, as Mirav put it thirty years later, Grant Arthur presumed to inform him that he was in a mess of some kind, and on account of God. He failed to collect himself. “You have no business in a synagogue,” the rabbi said, rising from the table, “and you make a mockery of the Torah.”

  “I’m not the only nonbelieving Jew,” he said.

  “You are no Jew at all,” said her father, “and never will be.”

  Rabbi Mendelsohn turned and told his daughter that if she was not home within the hour, she would not be welcome in his house again.

  “It was my first experience with someone who denied the existence of God,” she continued in the commons room, thirty years later, “and he had done so in the presence of my father. That was much more shocking—more violent—than if he’d reared back and punched the man. And I felt as you might expect me to feel if my father had come over to call me a slut and a whore—but worse. Much dirtier. Strange, isn’t it? I was deeply ashamed and scandalized and yet in love and hurt in some way, betrayed, and so I was very confused.”

  “Did you go home that night?” asked Stuart.

  “I did,” she said. “I looked at him differently when he admitted that he didn’t believe. There was an immediate estrangement. I’ve been married and divorced—I know from estrangement!” she said, laughing. “But with marriage, it takes time. With Grant it was instant. In my world, God was a fact of life, plain and simple. How could you be a good person and not believe in God?”

  But the next day on lunch break, she found herself against all better judgment following her confusion back to its source. He answered the door in skullcap and beard—a Jew like any other but stripped now of some essential core, so that he looked costumed, a parody. She saw the clownish impiety her father must have seen when he stood where she was standing just the day before. Why was he wearing those clothes?

  “Please come inside,” he said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Please,” he said. “Last night was the worst night of my life.”

  “Why are you dressed like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a Jew.”

  “Mirav, please,” and he opened the door wide.

  She felt like Jezebel entering the house of Satan, bound to be torn to pieces by dogs until only her hands and feet remained.

  “I want to know why,” she said. “Why you pretend.”

  “Is that what you think I’m doing, pretending?”

  “What do you call it?”

  “Devotion.”

  “Devotion?” she said. “To what?”

  “To you,” he said. “To your father. To the Jews.”

  “But the Jews are the Jews because they are devoted to God.”

  “The Jews are the Jews because they are devoted to the Jews,” he said.

  “I think you’re confused,” she said.

  “Mirav, do you have any idea how much more is required of me to be a Jew, how much more is demanded of me than of your father? How much more I must sacrifice—”

  Instinct took over, and she pushed him. He fell back but steadied himself.

  “He has Kiev,” he said, “and the birthright, and the upbringing.”

  “And you have a Marc Chagall on your wall! You can have everything you want!”

  “Not everything,” he said.

  The first incident took place a few nights later, when he stood on the Mendelsohns’ front lawn and called out to the rabbi. “Rabbi Mendelsohn,” he said, “Rabbi Mendelsohn. Do I not follow the commandments as God demands? Do I not tithe? Do I not fast? Do I not celebrate the Revelation at Sinai? Have I not had myself circumcised for you? Learned Hebrew for you? Changed my name? Let my hair grow? Whether He is or is not, do I not make a good and righteous person in the eyes of God? Look out your window and tell me what you see. What of me is not a Jew?”

  The rabbi called the police.

  “Why do you deny me?” he continued. “What have I done? Do you love Judaism and want to protect it? You should be a Christian! Stand out here, Rabbi Mendelsohn, with me, with the Christian, and look in at the Jews. At the candles that light up the faces of your loved ones. At the verses that bind you together. At the fellowship that makes you Jews. Then you would love Judaism!”

  Siren lights flickered down the street. He didn’t run. The police gave him a stern warning and told him not to return.

  “Why do you study the Torah?” she asked. “Isn’t it just a waste of your time?”

  “Do you think that without God, the Torah is without beauty? Do you think it’s without wisdom?”

  “But God is everywhere in the Torah.”

  “The goodness of the Jews is everywhere,” he said. “Their temptations, their folly, their humanity. Their intelligence, their compassion. Their struggle. Their charity. You don’t need God for those things.”

  “But God is what inspires them.”

  “The greatness of the Jews is what inspires them,” he said. “God only inspires fear.”

  The next time he stood on the lawn, he asked Rabbi Mendelsohn to please forgive him for any rudeness. “But where is He now?” he asked, and his voice came clearly through the open windows. “Let Him strike me dead if my actions displease Him. If I am not a Jew, let Him strike me dead.” He paused. “Now why has He not struck me dead? Does it mean that I am a Jew? Or is He simply not there? Or is He standing by yet again while the Jews suffer another insult at the hands of a Gentile? How many insults do you endure before you turn your back on Him, Rabbi Mendelsohn? William of Norwich wasn’t enough? The Inquisition—that wasn’t enough? The pogroms, the gas chambers? Let Him strike me dead, Rabbi, if I do not hate the anti-Semite as much as you. Let Him strike me dead if I do not love you like a brother. Can’t you see why I love you, Rabbi? Or are you blind to it because you were born to it?”

  This time he was gone when the police arrived. They told the rabbi they would go to the man’s house and have a talk with him. But if the rabbi really wanted to keep him away, they suggested he find a lawyer and seek a protective order.

  “All your life you’ve been told to believe,” he said to her. “Your father’s a rabbi, a pious man. You go to services. You are given little lessons. You’re taught to fear Him, to love Him, to respect Him, to obey Him. It doesn’t surprise me that you look at me like a stranger, like you hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you,” she said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “You come five minutes, ten minutes at most.”

  “But I do come.”

  “You won’t kiss me.”

  “I can’t kiss you because I don’t understand you,” she said.

  “It’s simple,” he said. “God is a relic you don’t need.”

  “You say that. What does it mean?”

  “Why do you need God when you have Judaism? Why mar something so beautiful?”

  “There would be no Judaism without Him!”

  “Do you know the true meaning of the blowing of the shofar?” he asked her.

  She hated his arcane questions.

  “Of course,” she said. “It announces the start of holidays, and… it awakens the soul—”

  “No,” he said. “You are in Los Angeles in the twentieth century. Blowing the shofar in Los Angeles in the twentieth century has the same meaning as blowing the shofar in Gezer and Dibon in the First Temple period. That’s the true meaning of the shofar: to connect the Jews of Los Angeles to the Jews of Gezer whenever it
is blown. It is about the people, not God.”

  “No,” she said. “That’s not correct.”

  “Why did you keep going back to him?” Stuart asked her in the commons room.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “I was compelled to, I was drawn to him. I was still in love. He’d lied to me, or misled me, if you want to be kind, and I wanted answers. I was a little scared of him, but I liked listening to him, listening to him thrilled me. And now that he was free to be honest, he had a lot more to say. I was young; I was naïve. I was shocked by most of the things he said, and I was made to think. Was it necessary that the person I loved believe? Why? Because I believed? Did I believe? What did I believe? Or was it enough that he be a Jew? Was he a Jew? He was different, I’ll tell you that. And determined. And he wanted me. I was seduced. I was very sheltered, and I discovered I liked people who acted freely. Why did I go back to him?” she said. “Because he knew how to make me.”

  She still worked in the office of her uncle’s grocery. One day her father entered the office, and the two cousins who worked alongside her stood up from their desks in silence and left the room. Then her uncle stood and left, too. Her father sat down on a chair halfway across the room. He looked at her a long time. When he spoke, it was only loud enough to convey the words across the distance.

  “You hear from his own mouth that he doesn’t believe, and still you see him?” He paused, and the room was silent. “He comes to our house, he disrupts our peace, he makes a spectacle of us, he menaces us like we live in the ghetto a hundred years ago, and still you choose to disgrace yourself and your family?”

  “It’s not that easy, Papa.”

  “You give yourself to a man before you’re married.”

  “No, Papa, we never—”

  “You give yourself to this profane man who’s not your husband,” he said, “and still you see him when you know who he is and what he believes? Tell me who he is, this man, if not Satan dressed up as a Jew?”

  “He’s confused, Papa. And I think he’s lost.”