Earth, Air, Fire and Water, bound here as one;
Rune and rock and blood and bone, power of sea and power of stone, bound here as one
I was hoping there would be some spell casting, and there was. After creating a circle by marking off the four directions, and creating an altar in the middle of the circle, the coven cast a healing spell for my mom, which I thought was very nice of them. I also asked for a spell to find Sheldon and they graciously burned some herbs, which smelled delicious, and recited:
I conjure thee oh creature of darkness, that thou beest at a meeting place of love and joy and truth; a shield against death; a boundary between men and the realm of the Mighty Ones; May our Rhoda, queen of the night, in all your beauty bright, find your lover wherever he be.
Afterwards we had a potluck dinner with scrumptious food—witches love to cook and eat, Charlene told me later. I felt right at home in the group when I noticed that the majority were on the hefty side after the robes came off. Karen, however, was not only not fat, but looked like she worked out regularly, and wore a very fashionable jeans outfit, with a fitted sweater, bolero jacket and high heels that I would have keeled over in.
“So you’re the infamous friend who had a fling with a vampire?” Karen asked.
“I guess word gets around?”
“Charlene isn’t known for her discretion, and this bit of gossip is more than juicy, it’s well, Page Six worthy. I am so in awe of you. I have never met anyone who has actually had sex with a vampire. How was it?”
I’d always admired Charlene for being so open, but not with my love life.
“I really don’t want to share the gory details, except that there wasn’t any…gore I mean. I just want to find him. He left me flowers and a promise to see me again but not a word since. It’s been two weeks. I would never track down a guy who didn’t want to see me because despite frequent lapses, I do have some pride. But now there’s another reason I don’t want to go into.”
“What do you know about him?”
“He’s Jewish, works in the diamond district, lives as a Hasid in Crown Heights.”
“That’s a great cover,” Karen observed, obviously impressed. “I’ve heard rumors about Hasidic vampires, that there may be a whole nest of them in Crown Heights.”
“Where did you hear that rumor?”
“I took the tour.”
“The tour? Is there a Hasidic vampire tour?”
“No, but there’s a tour of Lubavitcher Hasidic sites in Crown Heights. The guide told us about some very mysterious Hasids who only come out at night,” Karen said. “He showed us their lair—I vaguely remember where it is. I asked him a lot of questions but all he would say was they were just dedicated Talmudic scholars, he knew very little about them and neither did anyone else. He said that as long as they observed Jewish law and didn’t bother anyone the rabbis wouldn’t bother them. Then I asked if they were married or had kids. He looked at me very suspiciously and clammed up. It was weird.”
“We’re going to have to take the tour, obviously,” I said. “Karen, would you come? Maybe you’ll remember the building he pointed out. And Charlene, I’m sure you wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Charlene nodded enthusiastically. She was always up for an adventure, no matter how bizarre the destination.
Chapter Eight
We arrived for the Hasidic tour promptly at the ungodly hour of 10:30 a.m. At least it was ungodly for me. I was usually barely up by that hour, and certainly was never on the subway to Brooklyn by 9:30. Maybe I could keep waking up later and later until I adjusted to Sheldon’s schedule—once I found out what his schedule actually was. Charlene and Karen came with me for the tour. I’d never been to Crown Heights. It felt like we’d gotten out of the subway from twenty-first-century New York and exited into a time warp—eighteenth-century Europe, but with some visitors from Harlem. Hasidic men, wearing black suits and hats with long beards and side curls, shared the streets with black youth in baggy pants and over-the-ear wool caps. The Hasidic women—in kerchiefs, black stockings and long coats-- were all pushing baby carriages and had three or more kids hanging off them. The stores had Yiddish as well as English signs.
The tour participants consisted of us and a group of very Republican-looking white couples dressed up in their Sunday best, and their excessively neat children, all of whom could have been transported straight from 1958. The three of us stood out like exotic birds in a henhouse. I asked the big blonde woman next to me where they came from. “We’re from Pastor Hagee’s Church in San Antonio, Texas, dear,” she said with a southern drawl, assuming I knew what she was talking about. She stuck her face too close to mine and said loudly, “This tour is just fascinating. We went to Israel last year. We just love Jews.”
“What?” I was stunned. “Why would you love Jews?”
“Well, you know the Bible says that the End of Days will come after the Jews return to the Land of Israel. Then there will be a second coming of Christ and we Christian faithful will go up to Heaven during Rapture. The rest of humanity will just go to Hell. We came on this tour to be more Rapture ready.”
I’d heard something about the Rapture but never met anyone who believed in it. “How about the Jews?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer.
“Oh, we wouldn’t harm a hair on your dear little heads. All you have to do is convert and you can come up to Heaven with us.”
“How did you know I was Jewish?”
“The nose, darlin’.”
For a moment I wondered why I’d never gotten one of those ski jump noses like all the girls I grew up with. Because I liked my nose, that’s why. I thought it was aristocratic.
“We’re stuck on the tour with a bunch of born-again nutcases,” I whispered to Charlene.
“I heard that broad. You know George Bush and Sarah Palin believe in the Rapture.”
“Let’s hope it works. When the Rapture comes they get transported to heaven and we get to stay here with all the liberals, atheists and other apostates.”
I turned towards our tour guide who was lecturing about the history of the Chabad movement. “Most people assume Hasidim are sort of like the Amish—but Jewish,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. We may have black hats, speak Yiddish and have as many children as God grants, some of us have ten or more, but we also have one of the most popular sites on the Internet.”
“Why am I not surprised?” I nudged Charlene again. “There’s no way Jews could resist modern technology no matter what kind of clothes they wear.”
Our guide was a little, skinny, very young guy with the requisite beard, except his was short and scraggly. His Yiddish accent was incongruous on such a youngster. In my world only people over eighty had a Yiddish accent. He introduced himself as Rabbi Yisroel, the former rabbi of Woodstock, New York. Like Mormons, the Lubavitchers are missionaries. They set up shop in cities and towns all over the country and try to convert Jews who have strayed from the fold back to their religion.
“Why did you leave Woodstock?” I asked, wondering why anyone would come back to this dreary neighborhood when he could live in the beautiful Catskills.
“Family problems, don’t ask! Plus there was a war for the local Jews. A rival Chabad rabbi in Kingston a few miles away had more money and support. Between him and the Woodstock Jewish Congregation folk singing rabbi, no one came to my services. I’m a musician too, but I play rap music.”
“What???” The day was getting stranger.
“You didn’t know there were Hasidic rappers, did you?” he laughed. “I play back-up for Matishayu, the famous Jewish reggae rapper. He was on Letterman a while ago.”
“No, I didn’t know.” Hey, if there were Hasidic vampires, why not Hasidic rappers.
The first stop was the balcony of the Lubavitch synagogue where we were segregated by Plexiglas from the two hundred or so long-bearded Jewish men swaying wildly and davvening off-key. It turns out the Plexiglas was the mehitza,
the barrier that separated the women from the men below. When it came to sexism even Muslim fundamentalists don’t have much on Hasidic Jews. At least Orthodox Jewish women don’t have to wear veils, but they do have to cover their heads. In olden times they wore kerchiefs but today most of them wear wigs, which makes no sense at all in an era where wigs are sexier than real hair.
The next stop was fun--a matzoh bakery where they were making shmura matzoh that was kosher for Passover. In the obsessive-compulsive tradition of Kosher food the matzoh has to be made in less than eighteen minutes so the dough won’t rise, not even one millimeter.
“Try not to get in the way,” Yisroel instructed us as the group stepped from the freezing sidewalk into a loud, hot, dizzying flurry of activity. Twenty-five women in kerchiefs stood side by side at a paper-covered table furiously rolling dough into flat round blobs that were then tossed to another table where a four-man team punctured them with tiny holes, lined them up on wooden poles and handed them to a baker who slid them into a coal- burning oven for precisely twenty seconds. The workers greeted each batch with shouts in Yiddish and bursts of applause. We got to taste the matzoh which, though slightly burnt, was a lot better than Manischevitz.
The next stop was a tiny living room where a wizened old man was painstakingly penning a Torah scroll with a quill on parchment. I was fascinated by his artistry. Our guide explained it took a year to make these scrolls and synagogues all over the world ordered them.
We wound up at the visitors center at the Rebbe’s headquarters. Rebbe Menachem Schneerson had been the spiritual leader of the Chabad movement until he had the temerity to die in 1994 without naming a successor, which occasioned a huge battle between two factions of Lubuvitchers. I had no idea who won. A lot of Lubuvitchers thought he was the messiah, even after he died. I wondered how that would jibe with the second coming of Christ according to the fundamentalist Christians. I could imagine the spirits of Schneerson and Jerry Falwell battling it out during the Rapture. Who would get into heaven and who would have to convert? I’d put my money on the Rebbe.
On the way to the deli for lunch, which was included with the tour, Karen shouted out, “That’s it. That’s the place where the scholars only studied after dark. I’m sure of it.”
We were on St. Marks Avenue. She pointed out a nondescript brownstone with blackout curtains on the upstairs windows.
“Who lives there?” she asked our guide.
“That building is cursed,” our guide said in a low voice.
“Who cursed it?” I asked him, hoping to get some useful information.
“There are rumors of some strange goings-on there,” he stroked his beard thoughtfully, raised his eyebrows and nodded in a scholarly way. “Local Kabbalists tell stories about estries who fly and subsist on blood, especially the blood of children. Maybe vampires. It’s probably just superstition, but you never know.” He gave a ghoulish laugh to see how the kids on the tour were reacting. They had been pretty bored so far but they perked up at the word vampire. Even fundamentalist Christian kids weren’t immune to the gospel according to Stephenie Meyer.
“Unholy creatures,” one of the suits said vehemently. “They should be burned at the stake.”
“You just need the stake, not the bonfire, I believe,” I said to him sarcastically. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no such thing as vampires.”
“That’s the place he pointed out during the last tour. He seems to have conveniently forgotten,” Karen whispered to us. “We’ll go back there tonight. But let’s finish the tour. I’d hate to miss the deli lunch.”
By the time we got to the deli I fell into the chair, exhausted. That was a hell of a long tour. Unfortunately today’s Hasidim may speak Yiddish but they know nothing about real Jewish food. I was hoping to get some good kosher food, but the pastrami was dried out and the corned beef was worse. The bagels were the big puffy kind, not the little chewy old-fashioned ones. You have to go to Katz’s on the Lower East Side for real pastrami.
That night we took the subway back to Brooklyn and braved the streets in Crown Heights, which looked much less Jewish as the sun was setting. Crown Heights was still the ghetto. When we got to St. Marks Avenue I relaxed since it was across from the 77th Precinct. We could always yell and maybe a cop would come running. Or maybe not. Why, I wondered, were streets named after saints, especially in this neighborhood. Why not Rabbi Akiva Avenue or Golda Meir Boulevard? Harlem had Martin Luther King Boulevard or W. E. B. DuBois Avenue. The building in question looked even more ominous at dusk, with those black curtains and a stoop that looked like no one ever sat on it.
“Can we go home now?” Charlene’s voice quavered.
“C’mon, you big sissy.” I wasn’t easily scared especially when this close to possibly finding Sheldon. “You’re six feet tall and know karate and kickboxing.” Charlene was always taking the latest aerobic fad. “What’re you so afraid of?”
“Things that go bump in the night, more than getting mugged. Though that’s crossed my mind as well. That building might have some nasty vampires along with your de-fanged boyfriend.”
“Get a grip,” Karen chided Charlene. “We’re big bad witches remember. We can always cast a spell.”
“Spell?” Charlene squeaked. “I don’t know any spells against vampires. Do you?”
“How about the divine light invocation?”
“What’s that?” I asked. Charlene also looked bewildered.
“OK here’s what we do just in case,” Karen instructed.
“Raise your arms, hold your breath and affirm to yourself with all the concentration possible:
I am sustained by Divine Light
I am protected by Divine Light
I am surrounded by Divine Light
“Now use your imagination to see yourself standing in a shower of brilliant white Light. If that doesn’t work run across the street and into the precinct, shouting, vampires are after me. At the worst you’ll get locked up in Bellevue.”
“It’s freezing,” I said, all of a sudden noticing that we were standing on the street shivering. “We can’t just loiter in the street. Women do not loiter in this neighborhood. We’ll probably get arrested for prostitution.”
“Three nice Jewish girls like us?” Charlene said.
“You’re not Jewish,” I reminded her.
“Two and a half nice Jewish girls. I’m Jewish by association. It’s catching.”
Karen laughed. “I’m not Jewish either. I’m a nice Italian girl, Catholic of course, but since I’m a New Yorker I’m Jewish. You remember what Lennie Bruce said, ‘If you live in New York, you’re Jewish, and if you live in the Midwest you’re a wasp—well I’m a native New Yorker.”
“Let’s hail a cab to sit in,” Charlene suggested, like the half-Jewish princess that she was. “We’ll wait for Sheldon to come out of that building. It’s almost sundown. He probably goes out at night, wouldn’t ya think?” Charlene asked me. “You told me he works at night.”
“It’s forty cents a minute. We could be here for hours,” I complained.
“I’ll spring for the fare,” Karen offered. “I just got a job on Wall Street. Hedge fund manager.”
“What kind of job is that for a witch?” I asked.
“The best kind. I’ll be a rich witch.”
“OK, if he doesn’t come out in an hour we’ll go in and look for him.”
“You’ll go in,” Charlene said.
The cabdriver’s ID said Khalid Mohammed. He had a menacing look and a prayer rug next to him in the passenger seat. If I’d been sitting next to him on a plane I would have checked out his midsection for explosives. I was nervous. What would he think of three women sitting in the back of a cab in Crown Heights casing a building with blackout curtains?
When I told him we just wanted to sit here he took it as an invitation to interrogate us. Unfortunately he spoke English—with a thick Brooklyn accent.
“So, whadda three nice girls like you doin’ in a du
mp like this?” he asked. “You should be clubbin’ in Brooklyn Heights. How’s about I take you to this high rollin’ club I know about. Lotsa older guys there. Gamblin’ in the back room. You might meet a guy with moolah.”
Was this guy with the Muslim mob or with a road company of Guys and Dolls?
“Where do you come from?” I asked him. “You’re sure not from the Middle East.”
“I’m from Joisey.”
“A Muslim from Joisey?”
“I’m Italian.”
“A Muslim Italian from Joisey?” I was beginning to feel like we were doing a Marx Brothers routine.
“Doncha believe in diversity? Whas wrong with a Muslim Italian from Joisey?”
Charlene elbowed me in the side and whispered, “He’s probably nuts. Just humor him.”
“Whaddya doin’ here anyways?” He kept talking. “Just black hats around here, no good lookin’ dames.”
“My boyfriend is a black hat.” I leaned forward conspiratorially. “He’s hiding me from his family.
“Whaddya doin’ with a married man, a black hat to boot? Them guys is good for nothing,’ I never got a decent tip from one yet.”
“My boyfriend’s rich. And he’s single.” I leaned back confidently as if I knew what I was talking about. “And my girlfriends wanted to meet him.” It was a lame story but he didn’t look bright enough to figure that out.
After sitting in the cab for an hour with Khalid asking us a long string of questions, including how old we were, where we worked, how much we made, who had a boyfriend, why we weren’t married, why we got divorced (me and Charlene, Karen had never been married), why we didn’t have kids…why, why, why, I finally told him that he should check out our Facebook pages if he wanted more information. We promised to confirm him if he friended us. I, for one, was lying. No way was that guy ever going to be my friend on Facebook or anywhere else, but the suggestion seemed to mollify him. Then he went into a long rant about how he hated being a taxi driver, how his back hurt constantly, how the Bloomberg administration was trying to drive honest cabbies out of business, how it was impossible to make any money after he leased the cab, yadda, yadda, yadda. By that time he’d gotten on my last nerve and I couldn’t have cared less if he wound up homeless.
Interview With a Jewish Vampire Page 6