Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul Mate

by Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Goldfarb squeezed Zach’s hand, let it go, and, tilting his face toward the window, his blank eyes seeming to discern the hour from the waning light, called out, “Time for Shabbos, Mr. Katz! Hurry, please!”

  As if awaiting his teacher’s summons, Avrum rolled in the rebbetzin’s cart, which now held a pair of candlesticks, a kiddush cup, two other goblets, a bottle of kosher wine, and two braided loaves of challah, loosely covered with a white cloth. The boy opened the closet, took out the rabbi’s suit jacket, and deftly guided the old man’s arms into the sleeves.

  Somehow, formally dressed, Eleazer Goldfarb seemed to sit taller in his chair. “Traditionally, as we all know, lighting the Shabbos candles is a woman’s mitzvah. However, if no woman is present, a man must perform this holy task. After my Malka died, I took on the candle blessing until last year when I accidentally dropped the match and set fire to the tablecloth. Since then, Mr. Katz has done it, but tonight,” the rabbi turned to Zach, “we hope you will perform the mitzvah for us.”

  Hypocrisy, not gender inappropriateness, made Zach hesitate. He was about to commit several violations of the Sabbath—ride the subway back to Manhattan, turn on his lights, watch CNN, use his electric toothbrush, program his coffee maker. With all that, how, in good conscience, could he say the blessing? “I’d be honored, Rabbi, but I’m not shomer Shabbos so I probably shouldn’t do it.”

  “Please, Mr. Levy. Enough with the ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts.’ Just light the candles.”

  CHAPTER 24

  THE LONG WAY HOME

  IT WAS A NIGHT OF FIRSTS. AT THE AGE OF FORTY, FOR the first time in his life, Zach Levy kindled the Sabbath candles. He was tempted to drape a schmatta or scarf over his hair the way Rivka did every Friday night until she wasted away, but he settled for one of the plain black yarmulkes Rebbetzin Malka always kept in a basket near the door. Also for the first time in his life, he recited the Blessing over Children.

  “Unfortunately, we don’t have any kids at our table tonight,” Rabbi said by way of introduction, “but let’s say this bracha for the children we hold dear in our hearts:

  “Girls—May you be like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah. “Boys—May you be like Ephraim and Menashe. Children—May God bless you and guard you. May God show you favor and be gracious unto you. May God show you kindness and grant you peace.”

  As if summoned by the blessing, Anabelle suddenly appeared to Zach standing on a distant hill in a dark place, Australia no doubt, since New York’s longest day was Melbourne’s shortest. (Unless the gloom was a symbol of their estrangement.) Her last visitation had ended badly, she sullen and remote, he bedeviled by his inability to reach her. Since then, her letters, sparse in the best of times, had stopped altogether and their weekly phone conversations were so terse and tense that he had come to dread them. He’d already decided that, during his next visit to Australia, they would spend a week together on the Great Barrier Reef. They would go scuba diving every day, and have intimate talks over dinner, and by the end of their vacation she would tell him what he had done to cause her distress and advise him on how to be a better father to her (and the other children he might have someday). A second figure popped up on the hill beside her, a small brown-skinned boy in red plaid overalls. Divine supplication didn’t come naturally to Zach, but he added a silent blessing for his son.

  After saying the kiddush, Rabbi Goldfarb passed the goblet to Zach, who took a sip—the Manischewitz wine tasted like grape juice, like childhood—who passed it to Avrum, as is the custom, l’dor va’dor, from generation to generation.

  “Come,” said the rabbi. “Let’s wash.”

  Avrum helped the old man to the kitchen sink where Zach blanked on what he was supposed to do with the double-handled cup on the drainboard. Was the correct sequence to start with the cup in his right hand and pour the water over his left or vice versa? Say the blessing before, during, or after he poured? And how many times was he supposed to splash it on each hand? Fear of doing things The Wrong Way in the presence of those who were more observant had probably alienated more Jews than Moses could shake a rod at. Why subject one’s religious ignorance to scrutiny when it’s so much easier to opt out altogether? Who wants to botch a ritual that others consider sacred, or humiliate yourself in public if you don’t have to?

  Thankfully, Avrum was first at the sink. Zach watched him hold one handle of the cup in his left hand and pour the water over his right hand three times, switch hands, and do the same thing on the opposite side, after which, while drying his hands, he said the blessing. Zach then stepped to the sink and performed the ritual The Right Way. He even remembered not to speak between the ceremonial hand washing and the blessing over the challah, a rule Rabbi once taught his students to memorize with the help of a triple-H mnemonic: “Hands, Hush, Hallah.” Someday, Zach hoped to teach it to his children.

  After giving thanks to the Almighty for bringing forth bread from the earth, Goldfarb tore off hunks of the bread and arranged the challah on a platter. “Pardon my hands,” he said, “but I nearly sliced off my finger a few weeks ago and, since Judaism forbids self-mutilation, I’m no longer allowed to use a knife.” Like Proust’s madeleine, the bread’s soft density and eggy flavor sent Zach reeling back to his parents’ Friday-night table, and when Rabbi and Avrum Katz started singing “Shalom Aleichem,” the Sabbath song of peace, Zach had to fight back tears.

  “Shalom aleichem, malachay ha’shareit, malachay el-yon . . .

  “Me melech, malachay ham’lachim, ha-kadosh baruch hu.”

  Synagogue buildings can be sliced in half and kosher butcher shops morph into Korean nail salons, clear eyes could turn milky and clear minds grow opaque, but Jewish rituals endure, Zach realized with a surge of renewed wonder, as long as there are Jews to say and sing them.

  Avrum excused himself, leaving Zach and the rabbi to reminisce about the friends who had moved away: Izzy the furrier with his second wife and three kids to Long Island; Sol and Herman, both retired now, to Florida. Zach’s classmate, Gary Elkind was a software engineer in Seattle and, like Simon Persky, the father of four. Jerry Grumbach, who went straight to LA after college, had a big job at Twentieth Century Fox.

  “Jerry has no kids,” said Goldfarb. “He’s gay.”

  The word fell from the rabbi’s lips without judgment, as if there were nothing unusual about a man being a homosexual except insofar as it might possibly explain his being childless. Somehow, the old man had changed with the times. Zach wished he could linger at his study table and learn from him—not just how to grow more tolerant with age, but how he had forgiven God for taking from him, a dedicated scholar and devoted husband, both his eyesight and his beloved wife.

  But it was time to leave.

  “Before you go, come close,” the rabbi said, hauling himself upright on unsteady legs. He placed his hands on Zach’s head.

  “Y’vorechecha adonai v’yishmarecha . . .”

  The last time Zach had received the Priestly Blessing was the day he became a man. Now, standing beneath his teacher’s broad palms, he felt like a child.

  “Shabbat shalom, Rabbi. Thank you for dinner—and all your help.”

  Goldfarb squeezed Zach’s shoulders. “Any time, Mr. Levy. Any time.”

  Zach was about to turn the corner onto University Avenue when Avrum Katz caught up with him. “Rabbi wanted you to have this,” the boy panted, holding out a torn shred of heavy blue paper. “It’s the piece he tore off his blotter.”

  Zach found the cramped Hebrew script unreadable. “How old are you, Mr. Katz?”

  “Sixteen in August.” Avrum caught his yarmulke before it slid off his hair and reattached it, lopsided, with a small, metal clip.

  “You must have been Rabbi’s star student.”

  “Not really.” The boy blushed.

  “Yes, really, or he wouldn’t have you around. It’s obvious he depends on you.”

  “I’m lucky he lets me assist him.”

  “Wh
at else do you do besides greet visitors and fix his meals?”

  “Read to him. Type letters for him. Do research. He tells me what to look up. I know his books, where to find things.”

  Zach held out the scrap of blotter. “Can you decipher this? And please translate it. My Hebrew’s pretty rusty.”

  Avrum squinted at the writing through his thick lenses, “It says, ‘Rav Zvi Hirsch Kalischer believed that children born of Jewish fathers and gentile mothers were “zera kodesh,” holy offspring, and we must do everything in our power to ease the entry of such children into our community. Kalischer said Jews should welcome the zera kodesh and not push them away, for there is always a chance that great leaders of Israel will spring from their midst as they have in times past.’”

  “Never heard of Kalischer,” Zach said.

  “He was a Polish rabbi. Nineteenth century. A Zionist before there was Zionism. He wrote amazing rabbinic commentaries and never took any money for his services.”

  The quote wrapped itself around Zach like a cloak of comfort and gave him, b’diavad, after the fact, a way to move forward. Clearly, he was the one who’d been addled and unseeing, too thickheaded to understand what his teacher had been telling him until, finally, the man had to spell it out for him in writing. Stuffing the blue scrap in his pocket, Zach said good-night to Avrum and started toward the subway.

  In that liminal postsunset interim when the line between dusk and darkness is as invisible as air, Zach Levy imagined what he would say if an ancient sage asked him to define dusk: “It’s the moment when you can’t necessarily discern the right path from the wrong path but you must choose one of them before it’s too dark to see anything at all.”

  Tonight, in the wake of his teacher’s bruised holiness, he decided that the wrong path was the stairway down to the subway, the right path, above ground and open to the sky. He had no idea where the rest of his life would take him, but he knew where he had to go right now and how to get there. He would walk to Manhattan; walking always helped him think. Nathan used to insist it was only six miles from their apartment to the northern boundary of Central Park. If that was so, Zach should be able to cover the distance in two hours without breaking a sweat. He checked his watch: 9:07 p.m.

  His father’s daily walk to work would be his course tonight. Nathan’s voice rode the summer breeze reciting: “University, left on Kingsbridge, right on the Concourse, another right on 161st, past Yankee Stadium, across Macombs Dam Bridge, left on Seventh, then all the way down to Central Park.”

  When someone expressed awe at his stamina, Nathan always said, “Once you’ve crossed the Carpathians, walking from the Bronx to Manhattan is a piece of kugel.”

  The Grand Concourse of Zach’s youth had been a stately boulevard lined with apartment buildings named for British manor houses—Rookwood Hall, Bedford Arms, Windsor Court—its sidewalks strolled by women in belted dresses and hats with netted veils, and by men in sharkskin suits and horn-rimmed glasses. Tonight, a different population was promenading—women wearing capri pants and cork-soled mules, and men in gold chains and backward baseball caps. Canvas awnings no longer stretched from door to curb. Barbed wire and boarded windows proclaimed the reality of crime and fear. The sign in a storefront office said, “LAWYER-ABOGADO—Tenant Rights, Welfare Rights, Quick Divorce.” Loew’s Paradise, the storied movie palace, looked as pathetic as a superstar fallen on hard times, and the hotel that, in Zach’s youth, had famously hosted Babe Ruth and Harry Truman was now a homeless shelter. Wherever he looked, Zach saw his old neighborhood in distress.

  Most astonishing were the synagogues. A Lion of Judah etched into its cornerstone or a Star of David on the pediment was the only lingering clue to the original identity of each edifice. The Seventh-day Adventists had taken over Adath Israel, the shul where Richard Tucker, the great operatic tenor, had started as a cantor and where four bar mitzvahs or two weddings took place simultaneously to accommodate members’ life cycle celebrations. The Tremont Temple was now the First Union Baptist Church; the Grand Concourse Jewish Center, reincarnated as the Love Gospel Assembly. Christianity had colonized the landscape of his childhood. And why not? What some abandon, others claim. To resent them made about as much sense as blaming air for filling a vacuum. Emptied of Jewish life, the great temples of twentieth-century Jewry were only bricks and mortar after all. Tradition can survive without a physical place, but a structure without meaning and purpose is nothing but a container for memories.

  It was easy for Zach to stay connected to Judaism in the fifties and sixties, when the neighborhood had jam-packed synagogues and the streets were teeming with Jews on their way to buy Jewish food and do Jewish things. Assuming he and Cleo could somehow solve the religion thing—a colossal assumption to begin with—Terrell would have just one connection to Judaism: his father. But what if something happened to Zach? Who would see to it that the boy went to Hebrew school, studied for his bar mitzvah, fasted on Yom Kippur? Who would dip apples in honey with him on Rosh Hashana, grate onions for latkes on Hanukkah, make haroses on Passover, and explain what everything meant?

  Friends would have to fill the gaps, Zach decided. He would revise his will and make Herb the executor of his estate and, in concert with Cleo, the legal guardian of Terrell. He would ask Rabbi Goldfarb to be the boy’s foster grandfather and oversee Terrell’s Jewish education (with Avrum Katz next in succession). M. J. would be Terrell’s surrogate dad because, though not Jewish, he was a world-class nurturer and had two additional qualifications: oil money and no heirs.

  While mentally providing for his son in the event of his death, Zach almost missed the turn onto 161st Street. Walking past the stadium—dark tonight because the Yanks were in Chicago—it occurred to him that Terrell could grow up to be a Mets fan. Zach had been imagining scenarios of father-son togetherness. Yet, given how Anabelle had veered off, it was obvious that children don’t come with a lifetime guarantee of parental compatibility. Oy gevalt.

  Ahead, Macomb’s Dam Bridge spanned the Harlem River, the moon floating on its surface like a thin slice of lemon. Just then, as if it knew he needed an extra push out of the Bronx, a blustery wind kicked up behind Zach and didn’t calm down until he made landfall on the Manhattan side of the span and turned left on Seventh Avenue—now called Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. He hooked his blazer on one finger and flung it over his shoulder. Though dawn was still hours away, he searched the face of every person he passed on the sidewalk and, remembering Rabbi’s parable, tried to see in each the face of his brother.

  “Who you looking at?” A large man blocked his way. Apparently, not everyone appreciated his fraternal gaze. “You see something you don’t like?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Zach replied. “I was just daydreaming.” The man shook his head, walked to the curb and crossed to the other side of the street.

  From then on, Zach was careful not to lock eyes with anyone else as he surveyed the gritty, busy beauty of a summer night in Harlem—men playing cards on an upturned milk crate, women fanning themselves on stoops, young people huddled under street lamps, singing and smoking. He tried to imagine which of the domino players would take home his winnings and give it to his wife to put in their bank account and which one would spend it at the OTB parlor, what burdens were troubling those who seemed stooped with sorrow, where that scruffy-looking woman would sleep tonight, why that teenager was crying, which of the men whistling down the block had just put his baby to bed and which man, like Zach, had walked out on his child.

  It made no sense, this late in the game, to be freshly terrified of making the wrong decision, but at 118th Street, he panicked, frightened by compromises he might regret. Demands he might not meet. Disappointing others. Being disappointed. Or was he just afraid of complexity? Somehow, his walk had acquired a novelistic arc, a picaresque sweep. A river had been crossed. One borough to another, one lifetime to another; then to now.

  CENTRAL PARK’S NORTHERN rim is suddenly visible up ahead,
its silhouette feathered by the serrated outline of tall dark trees against a deep purple sky. Zach folds his blazer over his arm and breaks into a trot. He turns right at 110th, left at the traffic circle where Frederick Douglass Boulevard changes its name to Central Park West. (Cleo always said it was because more whites lived below 110th Street and they didn’t want a black hero for an address.) Jogging down the park side of CPW, he murmurs each street number as he passes its signpost: 109 . . . 108 . . . 107 . . . 106 . . . 105 . . .

  At 104th Street, he starts counting his footsteps, then his heartbeats.

  It is five minutes of eleven when he pushes into the lobby of her building. The doorman recognizes him and calls Cleo on the house phone to tell her he is on his way up. Zach pulls out his folded handkerchief, mops his face, and puts on his blazer. Straightening his spine, he enters the elevator, his fingers trembling as he presses the button for her floor. He watches the numbers ascend. When the elevator slides open, he steps out into the hall and feels like a parachutist stepping out of a plane.

  The door to her apartment is about three-quarters ajar, framing her lithe figure. Bare feet, white shorts, white T-shirt. Tiny pearl earrings. She doesn’t invite him in, just stands there, unsmiling.

  “I want him, Cleo.” He says it and it is true.

  “But?” Her hand tightens on the doorknob. “Do I hear a but?”

  “Same as always. You know.”

  Her knuckles soften on the knob. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Can we talk about it?”

  She opens the door all the way. “Maybe.”