Aviva guided me to an office and introduced me to a middle-aged woman named Rochel. I tried not to stare at her fake-looking blond wig. Married Jewish women covered their hair for reasons of modesty. Most women wore a hat or a scarf, but really religious women cut their hair and wore wigs. It totally weirded me out.
“Welcome to B’nos Sarah.” Rochel smiled. “Are you interested in a full-day schedule or half?”
Aviva headed off to her own lesson, and Rochel handed me a brochure filled with pictures of happy girls bent over textbooks. I looked over the beginner program.
“I’m here on scholarship,” I told Rochel.
“Wonderful. You can take as many classes as you like. The evening lectures and workshops are free too.”
“I’m only here for the summer…”
Rochel looked me straight in the eye. “Then you should definitely study as much as possible. Your return is equal to your investment.”
“Oh, I see. Can I sit in on a few classes?”
“Of course.” Rochel took out a pen and started writing room numbers on a sticky note. “You’ve missed biblical Hebrew, but you could slip into the beginner prayer class and then the Torah lesson. Then there’s a half-hour break, and at eleven thirty you can go to halacha, the law class. Come talk to me after that if you want to stay for the afternoon.” She handed me the sticky note and beamed.
I made my way upstairs to the correct classroom and quietly slid in the open door. The room looked like any other classroom: linoleum floors, bookcases at the back, a blackboard at the front, windows along one side. Ten girls were working in pairs, facing each other, books open on their desks. A young man with a reddish beard and glasses sat at a desk in the front. He was cute but a little geeky. I said, “Hi, I’m Mia.”
“C’mon in,” he said. “We’re studying the Birkot Hashahar, page six. You can join a group or work by yourself.”
I sat by myself and read over the prayer. I actually knew this one because I had studied it in Toronto. You said the prayer in the morning to thank God for making you a Jew, for making you free. I practiced reading the Hebrew and got a quick lesson from the teacher on pronouncing vowels.
At ten I followed the other girls to the Torah class. The teacher wore leather sandals with kneesocks that disappeared under her long skirt. An enormous pair of plastic-frame glasses swooped down her thin face. An ugly kerchief covered her hair, and a fine mustache fuzzed her upper lip, but she welcomed me so enthusiastically with this crazy Brooklyn accent, I forgot what she looked like. She paired me with a girl named Michelle.
“I’m glad you’re here.” Michelle opened her book. “I didn’t have a chevruta.”
“A what?”
“A chevruta, a study partner.”
“Oh, I’ve never worked with a partner before.”
Michelle’s face fell a little. “Well, we read together and try and make sense of the text, and then we get together with the class and find out what it really means.”
Michelle wore her fair reddish hair pulled back from her thin face in a low ponytail. Her denim skirt was so long it covered the tops of her sandals. I noticed she had sewed up most of the slit in the back, and I wondered how she could walk.
Michelle was from San Francisco. She used to follow the Grateful Dead, until she fell in love with this Jewish guy and followed him to Israel. She was over him now, but she had decided she wanted to become Jewish, so she was undergoing a rigorous Orthodox conversion. She whispered all this to me as if it was top secret.
“Following the Dead must have been so cool.”
Michelle frowned. “No, it was soul destroying; it wasn’t Hashem.”
“Oh. I see.”
“I just had the strangest sense that I was supposed to be here, like it was my home, you know?”
I nodded even though I didn’t know what that felt like. “I used to be really into music too.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, I used to play banjo in a rockabilly band.”
Michelle raised her eyebrows. “A what band?”
“Rockabilly. It’s like rock and bluegrass mixed together. You know, the Stray Cats, Jerry Lee Lewis.” I thought Michelle might say “Cool” or “Wow.” Instead she gripped her hands together and looked anxious, so I continued. “I thought I was going to be a musician, but now I know I need to follow a more spiritual path. You know, with God.”
Michelle relaxed. “I totally know what you mean.” She smoothed the page of her book. “Music is good, but this”—she gestured around us at the studying girls— “this is amazing.”
Music was always a huge part of my life. My dad, Don, was a musician who was always on the road. He came and went out of our lives, but his music and instruments stayed in our basement. I grew up listening to his old bluegrass records: the Blue Sky Boys, Bill Monroe and the Carter Family. When I was fifteen, my older brother, Flip, and I formed a rockabilly band, the Neon DayGlos. I spent all of grade ten and eleven playing banjo in seedy bars, dressed like a 1950s pinup. While my school friends were running track and playing in the school orchestra, I was using a fake id and hanging out with my boyfriend Matt, the bassist for the band.
When I was little, I hoped Don would show up for my birthday parties or track meets, but he never did. My mom, Sheila, said he had his own life to live. I didn’t understand why his life didn’t include us. When I got older, I realized my mother had never expected Don to stick around. I imagined she’d gotten pregnant “by accident.” She never complained about being a single parent, or about Don’s absences. Yet I could tell she was thrilled each time he came back.
The spring I was sixteen, Don unexpectedly arrived home mid-tour and locked himself in our basement for a week with a couple of mickeys of vodka. I found out he had been on tour in West Virginia when he discovered his childhood home had been razed to build a Walmart parking lot. His mother had died a few years before and her house had been sold, but Don hadn’t realized the beautiful weeping willow in his mother’s backyard, as well as all the neighboring gardens, had been paved over by acres of gleaming tarmac. Don was devastated. He abandoned his tour and and came back to the only home he had—our house.
When he finally emerged from the basement, he presented Sheila, Flip and me with the worst song he’d ever written, “Grunge Baby.”
You’re my little grunge baby,
And I want you to slay me.
Kick me with your Dockers,
You’re the sweetest rocker…
The chorus jingled like an advertisement for a furniture warehouse. Don sold the song to a friend putting together a boy band and was able to retire from touring.
I assumed he’d leave after that, but instead he stuck around and slowly became part of our lives. I’d come home from school to find him making spaghetti sauce or fixing the tiling in the bathroom. He helped out with the band and gave me lessons on the banjo. It was like he actually lived at our house. He convinced my mother to sort through the plastic shopping bags of accumulated junk taking over our living room. He even polished my cowboy boots for me.
Then in the spring Don bought a dilapidated cottage up on Lake St. Nora. When the weather turned warm enough, he moved there to fix it up. Sheila, Flip and I joined him for most of August.
In the long hot afternoons, Sheila and Don played old folk songs on the porch while Flip and I raced air mattresses across the cove. In the evenings we ate bean salad, fresh corn on the cob and corned beef sandwiches, and played endless rounds of Hearts. Sometimes we played music together, Sheila and Don on guitars, me on banjo and Flip on improvised pot drums. It was the only summer we didn’t spend endless hours driving to catch Don at his summer festival gigs.
All that summer I swam along the shore and looked at the silvery logs in the water—half alive, half dead— and gazed at the peeling bark of the birch trees on the shore. Sometimes I’d walk into the woods and lie down on the forest floor and look up at the towering trees in all their beauty. They were so much older
than me, and they’d be there long after I was dead.
Once when I was lying on the forest floor, almost asleep, a breeze wafting over my body, I heard footsteps breaking the twigs. Before I had time to get up, Don was there.
“Oh.” I sat up. I tried to brush the twigs and leaves out of my hair. I felt embarrassed to be lying in the dirt.
Don put his hand out. “Don’t get up.” He crouched awkwardly and then lay beside me with his hands behind his head. I saw him close his eyes and then open them to look up at the sky.
I lay back down. Between the tree branches, clouds sailed across the sky in ever-changing formations. We lay together in silence for a few minutes. Don was so still I thought he’d fallen asleep. Then he murmured, “You could write a song about looking up at the sky through the trees.”
“Uh-huh.”
Another long pause. “What would you call it?”
I thought about this for a moment. Then I said, “I’d call it ‘Catch Your Breath.’”
“Huh.”
I turned my head to look at him. “What would you call it?”
Don paused again. “I’d call it ‘Catch Your Breath’ too.”
Michelle was staring at me. I shook my head. Right, I was here to learn. I opened my book. “Let’s get started on this Torah thing.”
Michelle nodded and we started reading the story of Sarah casting out Hagar. First we read it in English, and then we tried to read the Hebrew. Michelle’s Hebrew sucked almost as much as mine, and we didn’t get very far. When we took a break, I told Michelle, “I thought Sarah was one of the foremothers. She doesn’t sound so great and righteous.”
Michelle pursed her lips. “No, she sounds rather human.”
“Wouldn’t you be pissed if you couldn’t get pregnant and your husband took another wife just so he could have a kid?”
Michelle frowned at the text. “That would suck.”
“So what’s this supposed to mean to us?”
“I don’t think we’re supposed to study it that way.”
“Oh.” Well, why bother then? I thought, but it seemed rude to say that, so we just kept reading. The class discussion focused on the interpretations of some guy named Rashi, and on who was righteous and who was not.
At break time we filed into the lounge with students from other classes and drank coffee or tea and snacked on pastries. I looked around for Aviva, but her classes, conducted all in Hebrew, were on another floor. I sat next to Michelle on a saggy orange couch. She gestured with her elbow to a group of giggling girls. “Most of the other students are FFB, and their Hebrew is excellent.”
“FF what?”
“FFB. It means frum—you know, religious—from birth. They grew up religious and they know all this stuff.” Michelle sounded envious. One of the FFB girls came over to us. She had a band of freckles across her snub nose and a long dark braid down her back.
“Are you new here?” she asked me.
“Yes, I’m Mia.”
“Hi, I’m Chani.” She held out her hand. “We don’t really get to know the girls in your classes very well, so you should come Israeli dancing here on Thursday night. It’s a blast.”
“Oh, is it hard to learn?”
“You’ll catch on, no problem.” She turned to Michelle. “You should come too.”
“Oh, maybe.” Michelle twisted her hands behind her.
Chani smiled and went back to her friends.
I turned to Michelle. “She seems really nice. Have you gone dancing?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Michelle lowered her voice. “All they do is talk about shidduch dates.”
“Is that where you get set up?”
Michelle nodded.
I frowned. “I thought that wasn’t until you were older.”
“Nope. It starts now.”
I felt a twinge in my stomach. I squirmed on the sofa. “You don’t want to get married?”
Michelle bit her lip. “No, it’s not that. I can’t yet.” Her voice dropped. “Not until my conversion.”
“Oh, well. That’s okay.” I waved my croissant in the air. “I’m sure they’d understand.”
Michelle gripped my arm. “I don’t want anyone to know. I just told you because—”
I pulled my arm away from her. “I get it. No worries. When’s your exam?”
Michelle sighed. “Only a month to go.”
“I’m sure you’ll do awesome. Anyway, I’m going to go dancing. It’s probably fun, you know, in a wholesome kind of way.”
Michelle gave me a funny look.
At 11:30, I followed Michelle into the halacha or law class. The students were studying the Shulchan Aruch or “The Set Table,” a text about keeping kosher. Right away they launched into a discussion about accidentally dropping some milk into a pot of beef stew. Jews weren’t supposed to eat milk and meat together. Could the stew be saved or did it have to be thrown out? It was all about proportions. The discussion sounded so ridiculous I thought maybe they were joking, but it was serious. Why couldn’t you drain out the bit the milk touched, say oops and still praise God?
I was disappointed. I’d hoped the halacha class would talk about why we were following the laws. Wasn’t that the point of coming to yeshiva—to figure out the Why?
After class I went up to the teacher, Miriam. “I’m wondering if, um, we’re going to be discussing the reason behind the laws.”
Miriam smiled. “Nope. It’s not that kind of class.”
“So we’re just going to discuss how to interpret the law?”
“Yes, that’s right.” She smiled again.
I didn’t know what else to say, so I nodded and left.
I went downstairs to talk to Rochel.
“So how were your classes? Good?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Great. Are you going to stay for the afternoon or the evening?”
I shook my head. “I think a half day is going to be more than enough.” There was no way I could do a full day. I was already exhausted. My head ached from sounding out words and following complex arguments. It was a good ache, but I wanted to collapse upstairs.
Rochel’s smile tightened a little. “Most girls who come for the summer want to learn as much as possible. So, go have a rest and come back in the evening. There’s Israeli dancing, calligraphy and a course on life-cycle event planning.”
I nodded and got up to leave.
“Wait.” Rochel put out her hand to stop me. “Are you interested in volunteering?”
“Oh.” I stopped. “Yes.” Tikkun olam. Repairing the world. I could help bring more God to the Earth.
“Old or young people, hospital or school?”
“Um, old people,” I decided.
Rochel gave me the pamphlet for an organization called Lifeline for the Old, a craft center for the elderly. “You could also join the Shabbos mitzvot group. They give out flowers at Hadassah Hospital.”
I took the pamphlets. “I’ll think about it,” I said.
I spent the rest of the afternoon buying books for my classes and visiting the craft center. I arranged to volunteer two afternoons a week, cutting cloth in the fabric workshop. The coordinator called me Maya and introduced me to a workroom full of old Russian women who looked like they’d pinch my cheeks if I came too close.
I was lying on my bed with my guidebook when Aviva came home. “Hey, how were your classes?” She pulled a bag of Cheezies out of her backpack.
I sat up. “Interesting and exhausting and different. My brain is killing me trying to keep all that new information straight.”
“How was the Hebrew level?”
“Oh, I think it’ll be okay.”
“So.” Aviva rested her chin in her palm. “You liked it?”
I thought about the girls in their boring clothes and the halacha class and took a big breath. “It’s not exactly what I thought it would be like, but yeah, I think it’s going to be good.”
“I’m
so happy for you.” Aviva clapped her hands. She looked pleased, as if it were her courses going well. She pointed at my book. “Is that for school?”
“No, it’s just a guidebook. I want to go back to the Old City tomorrow and explore. Wanna come?”
“Don’t you have classes all day?”
“I finish at one.”
“You didn’t sign up for a full day?”
“No. Was I supposed to?”
“I just thought you would. You know, with your scholarship and all.”
“Oh, there are so many other things I want to do. Volunteer work and tourist stuff, like go up the Mount of Olives, wander through East Jerusalem.”
Aviva tugged on her hair. “Oh, I don’t think you should do that. It could be really dangerous.”
“Oh, c’mon, I’m sure it’s fine.”
“Look, I don’t want to scare you, but you need to be careful.” Aviva stood with her hand on the doorknob.
“I will be.” I tried to look serious.
“That’s good.”
“Hey, I was reading about this great hike to an oasis called Ein Gedi.” I held up my guidebook. “We could go Friday morning.”
“You mean just the two of us?”
“Yeah.”
“And hike alone?” Aviva looked at me as if I was crazy.
“Not a good idea?”
“The school offers lots of trips. There’s a sign-up sheet in the main lobby. I think there’s a night hike at the end of the month.”
“Oh, thanks.” The end of the month seemed an awfully long time to wait to go hiking.
Aviva went to use the phone in the lobby. She came back a few minutes later. “My mom says hi. She was thrilled to hear you liked your classes.”
“Oh, that’s great.” I looked up from my book. Aviva had already called home to say we’d arrived safely. I hadn’t called anyone.
“Doesn’t your mom want you to call?”
The Book of Trees Page 2