by Tova Reich
Standing over six feet tall with bulging biceps taut under the sleeves of his black suit jacket and a scar that snaked down the side of his face, starting somewhere under the brim of his black fedora hat and ending somewhere in the thickets of his black beard, he resembled a bouncer at the entrance of an exclusive private Jewish club. The outline of a holster was traceable at his belt, not to be mistaken for a cell phone pouch, for only a weapon would trump the Sabbath in a situation where there is potential danger to life. He had been a decorated hero of the most elite combat unit of the Israeli Defense Forces, hailed throughout the land as the number-one Krav Maga champion wrestler, a celebrity raptly spotlighted for his beautiful women, hard partying, underworld pals. A terrorist would think twice before messing with this guy. With a broad pugilist smile that showcased a wide gap, the space of a missing tooth top center, he welcomed us into a grand salon brightly lit by a private generator and flickering Sabbath candles on a long banquet table covered with a white linen cloth, weighed down by gleaming silver and china and crystal goblets and golden braided challah loaves yet unblessed.
“Eh, just in time,” he greeted us in heavy Israeli guttural, seasoned by Brooklynese, acquired during his return-to-faith apprenticeship years in the Chabad universe of Eastern Parkway, Crown Heights, following his sensational penance voraciously detailed in all the Israeli media. “A guten Shabbes to the ladies from the family of the heiligen Rabbi Tabor, may he live on for many good and long years.”
So he had been briefed on our personal data. “Are you referring to Rabbi Tabor senior or junior?” I inquired coyly.
“Eh, you mean Shmelke, your brother. The Holy One Blessed Be He never makes a mistake. There is also a reason for Jews like Shmelke Tabor, though we might not be blessed with the divine wisdom to understand it.”
Just as I was about to correct his reference to my brother by pointedly adding the title Rabbi, the rebbetzin Mindy came forward to take over host duties, as all three of us new arrivals were female and therefore her responsibility in the division of labor department. Her bitumen-black Sabbath wig streamed down her back in thick straight tresses, certified kosher imported from China due to the rabbinical ban on locally grown Indian hair from the heads of idolaters. “Sorry about all the security hassles, ladies,” she immediately said, “but you know the situation. The Indians don’t want another embarrassment like at Nariman House—need I say more? Anyways, you can never be too careful.” Her accent I could GPS exactly—the heart of Crown Heights, specifically President Street between Brooklyn and Kingston Avenues, there was more than a fifty-fifty chance that she was Chabad royalty, matched up in heaven with this rising star from the Holy Land. “Good Shabbes, Manika darling,” she exclaimed, as if just noticing the presence of the background support staff. “Thank God for our little nannies—am I right or am I right?” Leaning over as we stood there observing her, she gave Manika a warm hug. “Go and sit down by your girlfriends, Manika darling, fress to your heart’s content.” She indicated the section of the table where the nannies were clustered, already dipping their fingers into the serving bowls of hummus and potato salad even before the chanting of the blessing over the wine.
Malkie, the eldest daughter, now approached, carrying a baby brother not yet three with his long golden ringlets and bib stained orange from mashed carrots or squash. You remember Malkie, of course. She was the second of the rebbetzin’s eleven children, seventeen years old at the time, flashing a large emerald-cut diamond ring, three carats minimum. She had just been engaged to a Crown Heights boy of excellent pedigree, first-class yikhus, but was obliged to wait to be married until a suitable bride could be found for her brother Shmuly, older by one year, who was much too fussy for his own good, according to reliable sources. A good daughter who still listened to her mother, Malkie took you in hand, escorted you to the corner of the table where the teenage girls were quarantined for everyone’s sake, introduced you, brought you in, performing the mitzvah of Jewish outreach by drawing you closer, which bottom line was the family business—Jewish missionaries snagging the souls of wandering Jews who had wandered too far.
I tried to pick up your frequencies at the table, to check on you to make sure you were at ease, but you were too distant on the women’s side, and with the din of platters coming and going, choreographed by the squad of Indian servants, men in livery all of them armed, and the clatter of cutlery and the buzz of conversation soaring into the singing by the men at the top of their lungs of the Sabbath zmirot, pounding their fists rhythmically on the tabletop, you were lost to me on the airwaves. I had been directed by the rebbetzin Mindy to a place close to the head of the table for some reason, perhaps my perceived distinguished paternal lineage I figured at first, where Rabbi Mendy sat in state. To his right on the women’s side, beside me on my left, was a wizened old woman from what I could see of her. Her head bound up in a tight babushka that defined the slope and cavities of her skull was lowered over the open prayer book on her plate as an indication that no food should be placed there, as if sanctified words alone would be her portion, like those proper ladies in novels who placed their handkerchiefs in their wineglass in a genteel refusal of wine and all gross spirits; someone’s mother, I presumed. On my other side sat an Israeli woman from the consulate, sunk in turgid Hebrew chatter with the woman to her right. It was such an awkward position for me to be in—to be so prominently situated yet so publicly ignored and excluded, I hoped you at your end were faring better socially. Maybe that was why Shmuly, the rabbi’s son and heir apparent seated with the men almost directly across from me to his father’s left took pity and leaned forward to draw me into conversation by asking me if it was true that my brother, Shmelke, believed that a woman who submits to the desires of a holy man can prevent another Holocaust. The old lady to my left lifted her face, black as if charred in a furnace. “Ah, you don’t remember me,” she whispered.
Tall and dark like his father, but wiry, not yet muscle bound, with a thick fringe of black eyelashes that almost brushed the lenses of his glasses and a flushed complexion still only lightly matted with pale down, Shmuly resembled his sister, Malkie, consigned to the other end of the table with you and the other girls, almost as disturbingly as I resembled my twin brother, Shmelke. In compliance with the admonition of the sages that partaking in a meal without talking Torah is like making offerings to the dead, and in his role as the promising son of a leading Chabad emissary being groomed to take over in his turn one of the most influential posts, a critical hotspot, Shmuly now rose to offer a few words of Torah. First, though, he took a moment to welcome the guests at his family’s table, singling us out for a special distinction award, you and me, Maya, “Close friends of the Mumbai martyrs, peace be unto them,” he proclaimed, zooming in on you especially. “Little baby Moshe’le best playmate,” he called you. “Maya here had the z’khus, the high privilege, of playing with Moshe’le every day, she knew little Moshe’le, my friends, she knew him, she was like the best big sister to him.”
So that was the explanation for my seat of honor, I reflected—mother of Maya. Manika had talked us up, laid out the main selling points, Manika was our public relations advance team. Then he plunged into his Torah talk, focusing on the death of Miriam in the Wilderness of Zin, read in that week’s Bible portion, hailing Miriam as one of the first great recorded nannies. She saved the life of her little brother Moshe by babysitting from a distance when he was set afloat on the Nile in a reed basket to escape Pharaoh’s death sentence against all the Hebrew male newborns—just like our beloved nanny Sandra saved the life of our own little Moshe here in Mumbai from the hands of the wicked Pharaohs and their henchmen who rise up to destroy us in every generation, and in our time too, Shmuly declared.
He beamed an irresistible smile of gratitude at the little flock of nannies fluttering at the table and gestured with both hands for them to stand up and take a bow. All the assembled then rose in ovation and began clapping and singing and dancing in a circle,
the men with the men around the table, stomping with their hands on each other’s shoulders, the women more sprightly in a modest corner apart with the nannies seated in the center, whom some of the bigger girls raised up in their chairs, they were all so small, so slight, two lifters per nanny were more than enough to bear the weight securely.
Aloft on her chair, Manika flashed a joyous grin, black gummed from a lifetime chewing paan. She drew off from around her neck the rose silk dupatta that Geeta had given her and grasping it at one end she fluttered it toward you, Maya, and you caught the other end of the scarf in your hand, and there you were dancing like Miriam the prophetess after the splitting of the sea, that night I saw you dancing, I will not forget it, and all the women and girls coming out after you with song and dance.
Miriam is all about water, Shmuly went on once the dancing subsided and all the guests staggered back to their seats and slumped down again, submitting to their fate of sitting through the speech. Her name means bitter sea, maryam—a mixed message, like our monsoon, flood and darkness, but also cleansing, cooling, growth. In Miriam’s merit the Israelites were provided with water in the desert, our sages tell us. She dies and is buried, and the next thing you know the water system shuts down, just like our electricity shut down tonight. Right away the Israelites start complaining to Moshe. Where’s our water, Moshe? So what else is new? From time immemorial we Yid’n have always been big complainers. And God says to Moshe, Take your staff and go talk to the rock before the eyes of the people and water will come out. You have to wonder—why does Moshe need a stick to talk to the rock? Is this the first case of, Speak softly and carry a big stick? And why does Moshe hit the rock when God says to him loud and clear, Talk? He was a prophet, he could see the future; he knew what would happen if he didn’t listen. Oh yes my friends, he was a prophet—but even a prophet is human. Moshe was mad, boiling mad. Moshe had a temper, a holy temper, he exploded only in God’s name. Like when he came down from the mountain and saw the people worshipping the golden calf, and he threw down those two stone tablets in such a rage and smashed them to pieces. He had knocked himself out for these people for so many years, and now here they are bellyaching about the water. How could they hassle him at such a time like this, when he had just lost his beloved sister, his faithful nanny? Didn’t they have any consideration? He was in mourning, it shouldn’t happen to us. He would have liked to whack them, he would have liked to give them such a good zetz, but instead he takes his stick and whacks the rock—two times yet! I think there’s a word for that in mental health lingo. You can check it out with Rabbi Dr. Freud. Transference? Displacement? Channeling? Whatever. So Moshe, he gives it to the rock, two good clops. And what is his punishment for disobeying God? Shut out of the land. Sorry Moshe, you’re not going anywhere. You’re staying right here in the desert. No Promised Land for you.
My friends, the Holy One Blessed Be He who knows all, past, present, and future, ordered Moshe to take the staff because he knew he would hit instead of talk. He knew Moshe needed to act out, to vent. He knew Moshe had to get it out of his system. And the Holy One Blessed Be He who is merciful above all also knew and understood that at that moment Moshe in his heart of hearts no longer wanted to enter the Promised Land. Why? Because his beloved sister and nanny would not be coming too. The One Above understood that Moshe’s greatest desire at that moment was to stay in the desert, in exile, in the diaspora, close to his beloved sister-nanny, Miriam, until the arrival of our Master, our Teacher, our Rebbe, the Messiah the King, may it be quickly in our time.
“My friends”—Shmuly was wrapping up—“the Talmud talks about yisurim, pain and suffering. It talks about the yisurim of love. I won’t go into what the rabbis mean by love here, but in my opinion Moshe was suffering from love, from the agony of lost love when his sister, his Miriam, was taken away from him. It also talks about the yisurim necessary to acquire the land of Israel. Nothing worthwhile in this life is gained without yisurim. That also applies to a delicious meal such as we are all enjoying here tonight. To earn it you have to suffer a little, say a few prayers before and after, sit in your place now after eating your fill when maybe you’d rather go home already and loosen your belt but instead you’re stuck here and forced to listen to me yakking and blabbering on and on.” He flicked me a reproachful glance, then cast his eye to the far end of the table where you were sitting, and remained sternly riveted on you. “So my friends, here’s the deal. Come back tomorrow for a delicious lunch, you’re all invited to come and continue our celebration in honor of our awesome nanny heroines. But please—before you give yourself the reward of eating, you should also be ready to undergo some yisurim, it’s only right. First go to shul and pray, do a little necessary suffering, it’s not too much to ask. Tomorrow morning before treating yourself to another delicious meal, go to shul. Spend a few hours sitting in shul talking to the Rock.”
Next morning, following orders at your insistence, the three of us were the first females to show up at the blue Sassoon synagogue, Knesset Eliyahoo, and make our way up to the ladies’ balcony. It was so early that below us, in the main sanctuary, a full quorum of ten adult males had not yet arrived to launch the significant prayers. “No minyan yet,” Rabbi Mendy sang out. “Only eight people.” Okay, I thought, maybe Manika doesn’t count in the category of people because she’s not Jewish, I’ll even grant that for argument’s sake, but by my calculation, when you’re talking people, with you and me up in the peanut gallery sharing the oxygen supply, the sum total is ten—so let’s get the show on the road, Rabbi.
Very soon after, though, three glistening well-fed Baghdadi males appeared and took their places with showy entitlement at their personal pews affixed with their names engraved onto polished brass plates. The service proceeded with Rabbi Mendy at the helm, his prayer shawl drawn over his head, tucked behind each ear to keep it in place, reciting the liturgy expertly and with dispatch, but in a voice so creatively out of tune, it was a revelation, offering new insight into the text. A klatch of Baghdadi wives came chattering up to the balcony, steeping it with the scent of their toiletries and perfumes. Just before Shmuly rose to chant the week’s Torah portion, the rebbetzin Mindy processed in with her entourage headed by Malkie, the bride-to-be, and her pride of younger daughters all in their Sabbath finery, accompanied also by the skeletal dowager beside whom I had been seated the evening before at the Sabbath table. They took their reserved places on the balcony bench almost directly across from us, nodding to us in greeting over the chasm of the male sanctuary below that we Jewish princesses could penetrate only by diving down headfirst and breaking our crowns.
Shmuly’s voice, in contrast to his father’s, was high pitched and extraterrestrially sweet, as if the hormonal shakedown had not quite taken. You leaned forward with your elbows planted on the balcony railing, your palms joined together as in a namaste, your brow resting against the steeple of your fingers pointed heavenward as he melodically cantillated the tropes he had so perceptively deconstructed the night before—I’m quoting from your wildly enthusiastic recap of his little talk that you articulated with such polish, thanks to your high-priced college-prep education, during our walk home in the night. Death and drought, rebellion and retribution, archetypal motifs. From the front row bench on the balcony where we were sitting you looked down over the railing upon the top of his head in his black velvet yarmulke bent over the open scroll, you did not take your eyes off of him for one minute. Your mouth hung open so soft, your temple vein pulsed blue, your breathing was visible.
Listen to me, you dreamer, I wanted to cry out, Do you think you can squeeze even one drop out of this stone? Do not believe it, my daughter. It will not happen. Neither by rod nor by word.
Once again now you were stopping off at the Chabad center every afternoon on your way home from school. I should have put the kibosh on it. It was on every level a danger zone, however fortified and security-padded a cell it might appear to be to the undiscerning eye. I of all people
should have known it could only lead to disaster.
But Manika was with you every minute, I told myself, your chaperone, she would save you. She stationed herself a step behind you, self-erasing like a page-turner for a pianist on the concert stage; you would never lose your place, you would never get lost. Manika was a fixture in the room with you the entire time, present in the moment, unlike Varda when you used to visit baby Moshe’le in Colaba, demonstrably setting herself apart, depositing herself outside to schmooze with the terrorist disguised as the guard. O, protect us from our protectors, I say.
But as for Manika, even if in her heart of hearts it had been her desire to loiter with the security contingent stationed at the entrance leaning against the tank chewing her paan, it was not an option. There was no room in that huddle under the tent, she would have been drenched. The windows of the heavens had been cast wide open, the rains burst down in furious sheets, soaking the earth and heaving up all the filth only just below the surface. You and Manika sloshed through pools of brown sludge, kicking up excrement of all varieties and rot every step of the way on the road to your life-altering vision at Chabad, and soon the guards posted there under their sagging tarps no longer troubled themselves to poke their necks out into the deluge to stop and frisk. They waved you through without even raising their heads from their snakes and ladders. You were defanged, profiled, certified members of the inner circle, family.
So what did you do today at the Chabadniks? I would ask at the dinner table, attempting conversation. Your answer was always the same: Nothing. That was also the answer you gave to my regular daily interrogations: What did you do in school today? Nothing. Whom did you hang out with? Nobody. Manika squatting on the floor would bring her face down even lower into the bowl from which she was feeding with her fingers. I could not induce her to sit at the table after serving us no matter how much I cajoled. It was truly embarrassing, I prayed no one would walk in to witness this abject scene and make unwarranted assumptions about me. On the wall behind her against which she was propped a great water stain had bloomed, mildew rimmed and blistered at its heart, even in Geeta’s luxury flat on Malabar Hill where we were still holding out, even that proud princess was not insulated from the seepage, the monsoon’s revelations of what lies beneath, just below the paint job.