by Joshua Cohen
They teem in the streets, cordonedoff, starentranceside to the world; everywhere they’re rejoicing, horaing amid the shir: Oy vey can you see…no, I can’t, to tell you the truth, this veil, not over their hats, down in front, stay low; their mouths open wide to the niggun of a new day, they’re dancing in odd hobbled circles, closing in, tripwidening out again, wielding weapons of banners and bunting, beating their sandwichboards into placards, signs ’n’ wonders, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, their krazy kinderlach enjoying their appetitespoiling, dentitiondestructive kosher treats vended only in extendo familysize, lining around the impromptu stands and kiosks and carts and booths to purchase their merchandise, gleaning swag (not only the Gardengenuine, not merely the Islandapproved, but everything, the illicit imitation, the violate, knockoffs themselves knocked off the block, curbside vendors hocking the bogus, get your chimeric, the false of the false); purchases later they’re ready to wearing their own, above it souvenir yarmulkes, under it souvenir scapulars, which are tzitzit, phylacteries, too, tefilin, false noses and flossy beards, and so who knows if it even is Him up there waving and smiling and with arms held far out in front of Him with palms flat deficiently applauding their fizzy applause, and shvitzing, too, in this bare chill—how much they pay for His shvitz, who’s the seller, let’s have his papers: Metro Gestapo standing immovably at the sidelines, simcha security leaning up against the shuttered storefronts that line the parade routes, the limits of audience muster, standing sentry, as well, atop the 42nd Street mound, the makeshift Tel of paraphernalia profane now purposed into barricades and cordons crosstown (a spontaneous mountain, every lick of height lacked by Sinai this heap of treyf pots and pans, crucifixi strangled with the snakes of the rosary, value leather barcaloungers, kneelers and falds, robes and stoles); portapotties runnethover, traffic is stalled to the tushes of tunnels, constipated, congested; the streets are paved a hazard with papers crushed, crumpled: snowballs, the windfall of potholes; there aren’t enough trashcans, any there are have been like the courts overturned, without street sense or order. Dogs are hanged from the clotheslines, pinned above alleys that echo their barks with the gusts. Media personalities pass mics around headed in filter with frothing black clouds; flashes pop off like suns then fall through the night, smoky doves. As more and more people they keep crowding into Midtown though Mitteltown’s now what they’re saying, having bypassed the avenue gridlock by forsaking the tar for the ice without lane: touring carts, chartered, not quite climatecontrolled, they keep on with their arriving in caravans, hitched streamlined in lines, queues without end—from the Oranges East and West and from Hoboken, Hackensack, Ho-Ho-Kus, and Parsippany, from Conshohocken, Philadelphia, PA, and the Main Line, Levittown, and the Five Towns, from Garden City Herself of the island Long off the island off the Island that’s His, or that was; older people lately membered into newly formed, duesed and approved Affiliated groups and otherly miscellaneous benevolent associations bylawed friendly to the cause of the revivified Semitic, with don’t doubt special interests and hidden agendas of their own, too numerous to countenance before a good hot plate of fleisch and a schlaf, piling off that drecky, fleshsplintered hay and into the frost of the streets, veins swollen to burst with their life, a lively arterial clog; and the beggars, O how it seems that all the schnorrers in die ganze welt are just showing up, having gotten drunk upon the grapevine and pooled the dribble of their remaining resources to hitch and hire rides from points near, far, and enough, genug, each with a shaky withered hand out, each wanting no nicht demanding their own pinched piece of the action, a shtickel, a schmeck, the bell’s end of the salami, the warty tip of the pickle’s nose, the pleasure of your company and of your bed with you on the floor, and your mother, your sister, she single, or if not is she kind—this being the first stop of their individual fiftyfour city tours, one city for each Shabbos, it’s scheduled, one rest apportioned for each portion of the weekly read Torah, in each city by someone else, then in another city by that someone’s brother, to board for only a meager parsha of pity, the rachmones of an emotional miser, stunted in a grunted begrudge; receiving as it’s called home hospitality, a cold breakingfast don’t worry about me, and then—pulling out, moving on; two arguing: one wanting to trade his next Genesis weekend in Oconomowoc for a Leviticusly Deuteronomous stay in another’s Rome, Syracuse, Troy, or Utica, what’s not to like about the deal, have a heart, have mine and my bad back while you’re at it; I’ve got to be Upstate next week for a Kasha Festival, to make a few inquiries about a horse, the funeral of my father-inlaw, alright, so he’s just sick if ailing and, not getting any better you should tell me what to say, whatever you want to hear.
Another fanfare, this of trombones and unison tubas laying down chords under the cantorial wash, an invocation to tears: the Nachmachen’s introduction, open to both misinterpretation and appropriate sponsorship…a prayer for winter, to begin with: Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who Commands us to Wear Layers; a prayer for the lights: Blessed Art Thy Filaments and Thy Circuitry; then a prayer for the camera: May Thou Bless and Keep the Power On, the Reels Rolling, and then can I get a final Amen for that of the action, applause: Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who hath Given us Hands and, too, the Bad Taste to Clap Them Together…Der ladders slowly up to the podium, summated upon an ambo just below the rung stars; its platform teetering precariously atop that seconding mountain, Lawleeward above the square, its triangulating grid—this gutterhuddled hosting of trash spirituality, junk religion, bum cosmology, and the markets that minister them all; he squints down over this mass, this web of streets ensnared by and ensnaring, a swarming of inscrutable flies, gnats, fleas, lice, jumbles of hairy limbs in a fractious grab and grub shot through with sudden beards, the juts of chins, the opened mouths of the trampled faithful; eruptions of shoulder and elbow and knee, begging only the breath of a glimpse. Upon that skyscraping summit, Der’s flanked by the presences of President Shade, Mayor Meir Meyer, along with his local machine, notables of the state and national electorate, pluralistic ethnic dignitaries, indiscriminate influentials, luminaries and eminences (camera depending), seated aside all five borough presidents with the Joysey governor kept standing, Attorneys and Soygens General, the City’s Comptroller, Parks Commissioner, and the Chief O’Police, starry generals, recently kashered senators, feinschmecking as fat as pockets moneystuffed, huskily cigarboned, no longer under investigation they’re holding hands (their greasy fingers, pinkies inclusive, festooned with jeweled rings) with their own personal heroes of the week, whether righteous police, fire, or emergency medical, sponsored and subsequently publicized different from last: who tried to save which Affiliated, which synagogue or school from looting, or destruction; madeup and fabulously manicured widows to the left, to the right, and on their laps, too, those who’d once upon a time intermarried the famous Affiliated, you might remember, only to survive them for fortune and infamous scandal (actresses, singers, and a memoirist of singular importance), gathered here to present Ben on this the second, firstfruited day of Shavuot, with the key to the city, which as this city lacks gates and even doors repressed within what walls surrounding and tunneldark hearts must unlock nothing much, and so its keychain, too, a plastic hunk of kitsch logomached with I Heart New York, of all things. Awaiting Ben’s keynote address: a speech vetted by both the Nachmachen and Doctor Abuya to be full of sundry thanks, appreciation and honors, distinct pleasures, acknowledgements less salutary than the undecided Shalom of a rhetoric as empty, still, as the desert—spiritual, real—is wasting: gavaged Gospel prepared especially for Him by a team of overworked speechwriters, wordwranglers, hands hired away from patronage of diversivolent political prominence, priced from the favors of Middle Eastern dictators and kings whose highflown had always been spoken plain, scripted low, then toned in a grave delivery derived from an Apocalypse whose threat these inky ghosts have spent their lives perfecting for profit, and so mocking, why not, whil
e they’re at it; a message without a message, a platform with no leg to stand on, death by impalement upon the dull of a talkingpoint, say.
Ben shuffles endearingly slowly, kloymershtily klutzy manner up to the microphone of the podium atop the dais and shadowing there as if the one hand left of a clock, unbound, shading the face entire of this Timeless Square, this mess of Mitteltown recently redeemed from business, freed from the oppressive glare and din of commerce, lately rededicated to the holy—to the faith of these newest menschs and their womenfolk and kinder of thousands, these million they seem welling tears to flood the avenues east and west then ten street blocks north and further to spill out like blood spurted from the vein of the lane to stain the ice of the Park, to taint the pure and coldly bright earth surrounding the Temple, its reflection of the sanctuary’s dome, skymutual. With His veil lifted, Ben about to lift His voice—an echo comes from the crowd, a yelp that pierces air, its spittle a bullet, stray of flesh, He falls…a frenzied screech, its tongue the clapper of an urgent bell—then Tongues, speaking in or of them…
We need a witness! a witness over here! is what’s said, such nasally stop-tongued fortition made in response to a miracle wholly engineered, perhaps, or, nu, possibly even imagined, in the midst of the assembled…whaddya want: women faint, menschs overwhelmed themselves; they bawl like the babies they’re having; an accent failing: Hamm’s wing strikes quickly to hand out forms, passing them into the crowd from hand to fist, no longer questionnaires or surveys, but disclaimers, nondisclosure agreements. Is anybody hurt, I repeat, is anybody hoooooyt? Broadway’s sewers shrieking rhotic, lid their throats, go futz em. Officers get reared up into the air, go thrown from spooked mounts, geyn galloping under—slipping on prankish lots, lost marbles, trampled in the fracas ensuing. Shots rain up to snow stars. Nightsticks rap skull. Out with the hoses. Tonight, the glass will burn, the fire will shatter. No commandments will be broken, but who’ll vouch for their stones? Ben’s snatched; the rostra, evacuated. A helicopter rises, hoisting an overload, an underslung calf crying out…Ich bin the goddamned German Ambassador! The other guests of honor have disappeared, your honor. Ben’s dispersed into His doubles, lettered through the exhaustion of any alphabet, then numbered, alien Israeliens, the Garden’s gang of gängers…who is who, they want to know, how should I, they look the same to me; kicking, punching their ways through the home teem—enough of whom are happy to ape His likeness for no pay at all, not even for the admiration of neighbors, family friends. I’m me, Ben whimpers from His knees, cowered, who else—over here, you, nu, I’m talking to you, He’s saying at Union Square where they’re (unionized, but “for entertainment purposes only”) picketing each other, when that afternoon Bowery downed to the idol that is ye olde Battery amid a mob founded atop the altared ruins of its fort, they’re grossly salival kissing His feet and hugging His legs; pecking and petting a lovein, how they’re begging, beseeching, anyone but Him, His others…but it’s me you want, He says, me. Not who else, who better. Unconscionable, futzed—how they grovel like that, humble themselves at the feet of impostors. Ben grabs at His head, then His gut, the ego’s fat, turns it around in His hand. Me, this is me. Roots out His hair. Makes me sick. How they’ll prostrate themselves before any beard. Throng a finger risen in scorn. Asphalt gives poor reflection, tar no mirror at all—can’t tell how ridiculous we’ve become, so blackened, so changed. Hamm has Him facedown in the street in the freeze. Mada crackles the radio, over. A siren late through the Square airs His name. Another hand grubbing, not His own—it fists hairy paunch, digs nails, drags Him into the rear of a limo. Get in, Heber’s grunting over the seat, and stay in; be a good boychick for once, shut your door for yourself. They head west without light and against a oneway, turning onto Tenth Avenue parting the waters that are not water but oy lachrymose people, wave after wave of them unapplauding, widemouthed and raging and now coming to crack across the fender and hood, leaving behind them a staggering wake tipped sharply with spittle, a tide thick with gobhocked curses and blood. A squeal, then a left onto the West Side Highway, Downtown then a swerve off its edge—from a pier, there’s a crash to the flume, ice giving them way upon the riverine remains of the bay.
At a bivouac set up in the Park just south of the Temple, a tentcity of pilgrims with no further plans, having thought through nothing beyond this coming to town: arrival, mere showing, setting up camp then awaiting the blessing—Johannine among them, being inquisitioned by both presscorps and the public dismayed. Even given this utzy ruckus, there are still questions to ask, half as serious as sky, the other lightweight, to be dismissed in a manner professional, hand to mouth disarming and quick, a small laugh given out of the recline of the lips, a yuk humoring chuckle; the reporters love him and their cameras, they’re jealous…asking him what: boxers or briefs; nu, what’s His opinion of the Temple, or the new Sabbath legislation; really ready for marriage, are we finally saved? That was Him, the pilgrims gathering around, they’re asking, indubitable dupes; He was here, wasn’t He, what every arrived acolyte wants to know, I didn’t miss Him, did I, hope not, God bless, we came all this way just for this. Always late. It’s your fault, says husband to wife, though it’s his, always is.
How it’s been said—openflap whispers, in sleepingbag beddowns, this strawstuffed, stickstuck, muddying campfirelore—that Ben, though others hold it’d only been one of His Hims, you never know which, had healed a cripple, attempted to heal…Him attempting, then failing; this reportedly outside the Laz-R-Us department store, its location franchised, however, a borough away, Brooklyn’s King Plaza, or the Queens Boulevard Center—according to reports if not reliable then official—at precisely the moment He’s being evacuated from Times Square amid the progress of a riot still not contained and fast coming east. Martial law declared from the mouth of a gun. Don’t tread on me tanks through the tunnels. A pyramid of canteens without water. A command post nested with gulls.
It’s told: how Ben or another Ben finds Him or himself confronted, according to only the most salaried of our witnesses, that is, coincidentally the most memorious, too, He’s cornered, no choice or the alternative; how the goy rolls himself up to Him or him, demands an audience, airing grievance, entitlement, the lonely disgruntled, and how Ben or another just grabs him, lifts the babbling form from his wheelchair, dangles him in the air from his pits, then lets go; the goy geshrays a menschlike Oy, falls down to the sidewalk fronting the mall, a writhing heap of howl, still crippled, now worse.
It’s been asked: who tried to cure you? that’s what a lateshift nurse wants to know, later that Shavuout at the hospital (it’s related, too, named after Mount Sinai) to which the cripple’s been transferred for examination by a specialist who’s courting his daughter…God, she says, what a schmuck, but still the following day this nurse—who the night previous leaks to the press this particular story (and’s also a mother to twins), having been invited by agents of the Garden and with the flatter of media exposure for her and her easy-eyed, promising kinder, the promise of reward if not financial then that of the spirit, of hope—how she takes her older than previously reported daughters the two of them dressed alike out of their kindergarten early, schleps them but privately sleighed from island Staten to island Long and its Five Towns, which are not so much less than or equal to five than they are, factitiously, the same—in one of which Ben’s said to be dedicating a new synagogue, Beth Israelien its name, a shul, it’s preferred, and how she stands with them there, huggingly bundled babes they’re smiling gapped and waving at the wrist, their mother making her revisionary rounds through three hours, four, five of hard interview snow in the line that’s been designated for kisses.
From Newark out to Westchester, from White Plains on down to Wishniak Hill, from synagogue rededications to fundraisers for yeshivas and day schools, from mikveh grand openings to sales spectaculars at hat and haberdashery outlets and superstores for discounted furs, Ben lately in promotional mode’s been doing a lot of this, or His stan
dins have, this smooching of infants, the laying of brunch, the breath of only, upon a profusion of cheeks both upper and lower, on foreheads then even on lips, the face of all flesh. The Bens, they’ve been coached as if birthing, coddled through the criteria: righthand handshake with the mother or father, lefthand holding the head of the infant, without any pressure applied, minding the softspots, the give of the skull not yet fused; then, the lean in for the kiss, under the veil, this the scariest aspect for the infant, the approach of this hairy toothed monster, him looming, descending Him, beard brushing skin not to tickle a giggle but to irritate, chafe, while he, she, clutches at curls; how they shriek then soil themselves as they pucker a suckle at lips His or theirs, twirl hairs around their littlest fingers, tugging and how He or they just has to laugh it off, at the same time applying enough, pressure; not enough to smash hands, crush tiny bones, just enough to make them let go; fingers leaving a honey’s stick or other icky substance behind for a Mary to shampoo, condition, comb out; rinse and repeat. Imageconsultants, brandmanagers, remind: never let them tear at the veil, God forbid; revelation’s disallowed, verboten, no peeking.