Devotion

by Dani Shapiro

  Still, most mornings—between the highly evolved practice of checking the Amazon sales ranking of my latest novel and lustfully tracking down an unaffordable pair of stiletto-heeled Jimmy Choo boots—I found myself on the Web site of Kripalu, a yoga and meditation center in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. It was only a ninety-minute drive from my house. I studied Kripalu’s calendar for a retreat that didn’t strike me as too scary. “The Ecstasy of Sound: A Music and Healing Workshop” sounded way too woo-woo. As did “The Masks of the Goddess: Ritual, Theatre and Stories of the Sacred Feminine.” I was highly suspicious of the smiling people with their gray, kinky hair, loose yoga pants, and Birkenstock sandals. They looked like they had migrated directly from Woodstock. Who were they? Could they possibly be as contented as they appeared to be? I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to join them. I put up all kinds of roadblocks, conducting endless loopy conversations with myself.

  Who are you kidding? You can’t do this.

  Why not?

  It isn’t you.

  Well, whatever me is, it isn’t working.

  What do you want?

  More. I want more.

  So what you’re saying is—

  I’m not sure. But I want to go deeper.

  Deeper into what?

  But then something would disrupt the train of thought. A UPS truck heading up the driveway. The new puppy at the door, scratching to get out. An urgent e-mail from a student. A phone call from a fact-checker. And the next thing I knew, I was back in the thick of it. My rich, busy, over-full life—speeding by.

  7.

  When I was little, I used to sit and watch my father as he set out to say his morning prayers. In the den of our house in Hillside, he would face east—past the swimming pool, past the forsythia hedge that separated our yard from the next-door neighbors’, past the New Jersey Turnpike, all the way to Jerusalem. Dressed in his suit pants, shirt, and tie, he took his tallit from its blue velvet pouch, gently shook out its folds, and wrapped it around himself like a shawl. It was an old, well-made tallit, yellowed over time. Its fringe, the tzitzit, was soft and knotted. Perhaps this was the same tallit he had received on his bar mitzvah. Or maybe it had belonged to my grandfather, who had died when I was an infant. I never asked, and so I never knew.

  Once the tallit was in place, it was time for the tefillin. My father half sang, half murmured the blessing on laying tefillin as he very precisely placed the first phylactery—a small, perfectly square black box—on his left bicep, exactly two finger breadths above his elbow joint. He then placed the second phylactery high on his forehead, like a miner’s light. He had been laying tefillin every weekday morning of his life since he was thirteen, so he didn’t have to measure—they were like extensions of his body. He began to bind: around his arm seven times went the black leather straps that secured the phylactery against the crisp, starched cotton of his white business shirt. Once he had wound the straps seven times, he tightened them in one fluid motion.

  The box was angled so that it faced in the direction of his heart. His movements were swift and sure, free of the tentativeness and sorrow I sensed in him during the rest of his waking hours. As he began his morning prayers, he came into focus: he seemed to grow taller, more stately, as if in an artist’s version of his finest self. I loved him best (and I remember him most clearly) as that swaying man, wrapped in his yellowed tallit, his voice rising and falling in waves.

  I didn’t know that worlds within worlds existed inside those small black boxes—any more than I was aware that invisible worlds existed within my father. Sealed inside the tefillin were parchment scrolls, on which four biblical passages—two from Exodus, two from Deuteronomy—were written in ink by a scribe. It would have taken the scribe many hours of unbroken concentration to complete the 3,188 minuscule Hebrew letters in four parallel columns, and if he had even a single nonreligious thought while writing, he would have to start all over again. (In the event that he had such a thought but did not confess, the entire apparatus would, I suppose, be tainted.) Once the ink had dried, the parchment would then have been bound with the thoroughly washed tail hair of a kosher animal, preferably a calf, and placed inside the leather boxes, which were made from the skins of kosher livestock as well.

  Now—though he has been dead for over twenty years—I know my father much better than I did when he was alive. I have used all of my journalistic skills to dig into his history, and I have discovered that the man I watched each morning had already been through a lifetime of heartache: he had been betrayed by his first wife, then divorced; his beloved second wife died six months after their wedding; his marriage to his third wife, my mother, was contentious and disappointing; he was depressed, and suffered from chronic pain; he obsessed about his own physical health, and lived in terror of sudden death; he took tranquilizers by the handful. So what was his relationship to his morning prayers? Did he enact this ritual because it gave him some small measure of comfort? Or simply because it was habit? Did he think God was listening? And if God was listening now, where had he disappeared to during all the trouble?

  In a chaotic world—a world that had failed my father—at least here in the quiet den of his suburban home, he knew what was required of him. He made quick work of his morning prayers. The ritual seemed to enliven him; it gave him a sense of his purpose and place. By laying tefillin—and you shalt bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes—he was fulfilling one of many daily obligations; wearing them meant that he remembered that God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt.

  The daily business of being an observant Jew was pretty much a full-time job: And you shall speak of them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up. We were supposed to be in an unending state of gratitude to God for all he had done for us. Otherwise, it went without saying, God might get seriously pissed off. This is why we had a mezuzah affixed to each doorpost of our entire house except the closets and bathrooms, with another parchment scroll inside, containing further words from Deuteronomy: And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thy house and upon thy gates. This was why we had two sinks and two dishwashers in our kitchen, to keep dairy and meat separate. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk. And this was why my parents slept in twin beds—so that for seven days after the onset of my mother’s period, she wouldn’t contaminate my father with her impurity. There was a blessing or a prayer for everything, lest we forget, even for a moment, that our purpose in life was to appease and serve a very moody God.

  After he had completed his morning prayers, my father unraveled the leather straps, wound them back into tight coils, and placed them, along with his tallit, back in the blue velvet pouch. Then he took off his yarmulke, put on his suit jacket, and took the train to Wall Street. He worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and he did not wear a yarmulke there. He wore the same tan jacket as all the other traders, crowded around the board to look at the rise and fall of the markets. He ate lunch at the Bull & Bear, rode the commuter train. Our family took trips, went on bike rides, ate dairy and fish in regular restaurants, played tennis. We did not wear the long dresses, the wigs, the black hats, the long beards or side curls that many of my cousins wear today. But still—thrumming beneath the surface, ever-present—there was the sense that my father’s devotion was what allowed our world to keep turning. If he stopped—if he broke even one of the elaborate set of rules by which our family lived—something terrible might happen. After all, my father had to believe in a mercurial God who could be petitioned. Otherwise, he lived in a brutal and indifferent universe, governed by no entity, no greater being. When my father wore the tefillin, closed his eyes, and davened, he was doing what he could to protect himself and those he loved.

  He who is accustomed to lay tefillin will live long, said Maimonides. As it is written: “When the Lord is upon them, they will live.”

  8.

>   Were there signs in the universe? And if so, when did they occur—and why? I had grown up fluent in the language of biblical metaphor: the snake in the garden, the parting of the Red Sea, the burning bush. And more recently, in adult life, the notion of signs had crept into many of my conversations with my friends: I knew it was a sign that I should quit my job. I knew that it was a sign that something was wrong. How was anybody supposed to know when something was a sign and when it was just a coincidence? Or maybe “signs” were merely a way of vesting coincidences with meaning.

  I had never thought of God as a micromanager. I didn’t think he was up there sending secret signals to me and the nearly seven billion other people who inhabit the planet. As far as I knew, he had never gotten me a parking space. And so, to the degree that I gave credence to signs at all, I didn’t think they were coming from God—at least not in that man-with-a-white-beard-in-the-sky kind of way. So then, what were these signs—if indeed, they existed? A person could make herself crazy with this.

  The weather report is a sign that I shouldn’t drive into the city today.

  Running into that editor is a sign that I should write for her magazine.

  That twinge in my side is a sign that I should make a doctor’s appointment.

  As I continued to mull over these ideas, I also continued to peruse Kripalu’s Web site, trying to convince myself to go on a meditation retreat. I did this in the same spirit in which I might read a complicated and time-consuming recipe for Black Forest cake. It was a nice, even inspired idea, but when it came to actually doing it…well, it probably wasn’t going to happen. It was too foreign, too daunting.

  One afternoon, during this time, a friend took me to a yoga class. It was a strenuous class, and by the time we lay on our backs in final relaxation, I was in a highly receptive state. Final relaxation—the Sanskrit word is shavasana, or corpse pose—is considered by many to be the most important pose in yoga. In shavasana—lying still, arms and legs spread slightly apart, breath relaxed, palms facing upward, eyes closed—everything slows down. The physical body is restored, the mind released. I have often experienced a freedom from my usually racing thoughts in shavasana, as well as a kind of openness. A vulnerability to what is.

  As we all lay quietly on our mats, the teacher read a passage from a poem. Inside and outside her head, a billion, trillion stars, beyond count, circled and exploded…Songs were heard in spheres within spheres, electric, crackle, sharp. She heard nothing. How could she, when not once had she even heard the sound of her own breathing?

  The words entered my consciousness like a simple, pure strain of music. It seemed to me that, like the woman in the poem, I wasn’t hearing my own breath. I was always either stuck in the past, or obsessing about the future, while the present heaped its gifts on me, screaming for attention. I wrote down the name of the poet, Duane Michaels, and as soon as I got home, I looked him up on the Internet, along with the sound of her own breathing. I needed to get my hands on that poem. I scrolled through the search results and stopped at a reference to a book, Yoga and the Quest for the True Self by a writer named Stephen Cope. Who was this Stephen Cope? I had never heard of him. And besides, I owned too many yoga books that I hadn’t read. Still, on a whim—there were more sensible, not to mention less expensive, ways to find the poem—I bought his book.

  When the book arrived, something about it seemed to call out to me. Unlike the many books that I ordered from Amazon.com, which were driven up our hill by the UPS truck and left in boxes on our porch, I started to read this one as soon as I pulled it from its wrapping. How can I explain this? It was as if the receptive state of shavasana had propelled me to take one small action. Then another. And another. I had stepped into a stream and was now being carried along by an unfamiliar, powerful current. The book was ostensibly about yoga metaphysics. A deadly subject—worthy of a spot at the far bottom of my pile—but instead, I couldn’t stop turning the pages. A page-turner of yoga metaphysics! I carried it with me everywhere, savoring it; I underlined whole passages, scribbled asterisks and exclamation points in the margins.

  I brought the book with me, one early evening, as I drove an hour to a fund-raiser for a library in the northern part of my county. I had agreed to participate in this literary event, even though it was the kind of thing I often declined. The air was hot and muggy, and as a crowd began to gather beneath a big tent, I regretted having agreed to come. I made a mental note to be more careful with my time in the future. One of the library volunteers led me over to a table where my books were piled in front of me. I knew these events; guests at the fund-raiser would pick up my books, weigh them in their hands, ask me if they were good reads. Then they would cross the grass to the other side of the tent and buy a best-selling cookbook instead.

  I fanned myself with my program as the other author sharing the table with me took a seat. He was an elegant man with a kind, chiseled face. He had bright blue eyes, which he fixed on me with a smile. He reached over to shake my hand.

  “Hi, Steve Cope,” he said.

  Turn right, turn left. Stay home that day. Take a different route. Cross the street for no apparent reason. Say yes, say no. Get up from the breakfast table, slip into the elevator just as the doors are closing. Book the afternoon flight. Drive exactly sixty-three miles per hour. Flip a coin. Call it coincidence, luck, fate, destiny, randomness. Some would call it the hand of God. I wasn’t sure what to call it. What I did know is that this was a huge, blinking neon sign I couldn’t ignore or dismiss. All these seemingly disconnected bits—a new yoga class, a teacher’s particular selection of a poem, the wonders of Google and Amazon, an impulsive one-click purchase, an agreement to participate in a local charity event—all these formed a pattern, invisible to see. Do this, a gentle voice seemed to be saying. Now this. And now this. All of which had led me to be seated next to Stephen Cope: author, yogi, scholar—and director of the Institute for Extraordinary Living at Kripalu.

  9.

  On our last afternoon in Venice, Michael, Jacob, and I arrived at the Jewish ghetto just as the synagogue was closing. We had spent a few days in that magical city wandering around more typical tourist sights: San Marco, the Rialto Bridge, the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. I hadn’t really wanted to go to the ghetto—and in the past I would have left it off our itinerary. For years, I had avoided the Jewish stuff. Hadn’t I already had enough of it? But deep down, beneath layers of discomfort, there was something I wanted to know. Some powerful piece of my identity, withered like an underused muscle.

  It was a raw day in March, and by the time we took the vaporetto all the way down the Grand Canal and wound our way through the narrow streets to the ghetto, it had become dark and cold.

  One shop was open, though. The Judaica store. Silver menorahs gleamed in the brightly lit windows. Intricate mezuzahs were lined up on jewel-colored velvet.

  “Let’s buy a mezuzah,” I said to Michael. I had come here with no such intention, but now it seemed like the thing to do. We had dozens of mezuzahs in our basement, from every home my parents had lived in, but I had never once considered digging one up and affixing it to the doorpost of our house.

  We wandered into the store. An elderly woman was in back, behind the cash register. She looked like she owned the place, which we later found out she did. Her husband was the master silversmith who crafted all of the Judaica: pointers, crowns, breast-plates—everything needed to dress the Torah. As she glanced up at us, I was aware of what we looked like, as a family. With my long blond hair, I must be the shiksa wife of a Jewish man, and here was our little blond son. I had an irrational desire to announce my Jewishness. Raised Orthodox! Grew up kosher! Two sinks, two refrigerators—no kidding!

  Michael and I began examining various mezuzahs. There were big ones and small ones, modern-looking ones, and others designed with the delicate Venetian silver openwork I had seen in shops around the city.

  “What is this?” Jacob asked, turning one over.

  My breath caugh
t at the fact that my son did not recognize a mezuzah. But of course he didn’t. Why would he?

  “That’s a mezuzah,” I answered. “We’re supposed to put it on the doorpost of our house.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re Jewish.”

  It was a lame answer, but the best I could do at the time.

  “How about this one?” Michael handed me a lovely small mezuzah. I tried to picture it attached to the frame of our kitchen door. We have a stone porch, piled with wood. A bench, on which ski equipment collects during winter, baseball bats and gloves during summer. And suddenly I felt exhausted, completely overwhelmed. I stood in the store, weighing the mezuzah in my hand. I wanted to leave immediately.

  “Maybe we should just forget it,” I said to Michael. “I don’t know. It’s kind of silly—I mean, we have all those mezuzahs in the basement.”

  “No, let’s do this. It’s beautiful—and special that we’re buying it here. Together.”

  I knew Michael didn’t care about the actual mezuzah. But he was having a rare sentimental moment, and Jacob was curious—so what was my problem? As the woman wrapped it up carefully, packing it into a special box for our journey home, I felt paralyzed. How could we buy only one? We needed to buy—here I started counting all the doorways of our house—at least fourteen. If we were going the mezuzah route, then we needed to put one on each and every doorway except for closets and bathrooms. And who would affix it to the doorpost? Did it need a special blessing? Where would I find a rabbi? Which side did it go on, anyway? This was the way it had always been for me: all or nothing, I realized, invariably led to nothing.