“Anyway, Grandpa Irv used to do this thing where he’d give Max and me five bucks if we made a speech that convinced him of something. Anytime, anything. So we were constantly making little speeches: why people shouldn’t have dogs as pets, why escalators encourage obesity and should be illegal, why robots will defeat humans in our lifetime, why Bryce Harper should be traded, why it’s OK to swat flies. There was nothing we wouldn’t argue, because even though we didn’t need the money, we wanted it. We liked how it accumulated. Or we wanted to win. Or to be loved. I don’t know. I’m mentioning it because I guess it made us pretty good at speaking off the cuff, which is what I am now about to do. Thanks, Grandpa?
“I never wanted to have a bar mitzvah in the first place. My objection wasn’t moral or intellectual, I just thought it would be a colossal waste of time. Maybe that’s moral? I don’t know. I assume I would have continued to object even if my parents had genuinely listened to me, or proposed other ways of thinking about a bar mitzvah. We’ll never know, because I was simply told that it’s what we do, because it’s what we do. In the same way that not eating cheeseburgers is what we don’t do, because it’s what we don’t do. Even though we do sometimes eat real-crab California rolls, even though it’s what we don’t do. And we often don’t observe Shabbat, even though it’s what we do. I don’t have any problem with hypocrisy when it’s self-serving, but applying the logic of what we do to having a bar mitzvah didn’t serve me.
“So I made efforts to sabotage it. I tried not to learn my haftorah, but Mom would put on the recording whenever we were in the car, and it’s actually unbelievably catchy—everyone in the family can recite it, and Argus starts beating his tail with the first verse.
“I was incredibly obnoxious to my tutor, but he was happy enough eating my crap if it meant cashing my parents’ checks.
“As some of you might know, I was accused of writing some inappropriate words in Hebrew school. As terrible as it felt not to be believed, I was happy to get in trouble if it would get me out of this. Which it clearly didn’t.
“I’ve never thought about it until right now, but it occurs to me that I don’t know if I’ve ever actually tried to stop anything from happening in my life. I mean, obviously I’ve tried to get out of the way of inside pitches, and I make a lot of efforts not to use urinals without vertical privacy shields, but an event. I never tried to stop a birthday or, I don’t know, Hanukkah. Maybe my inexperience made me think it would be easier. But for all of my efforts, Jewish manhood only got nearer.
“Then the earthquake happened, and that changed everything, and my great-grandfather died, and that also changed everything, and Israel got attacked by everyone, and a whole lot of other things happened that this is not the right time or place to get into, and suddenly everything was different. And as everything kept changing, my reasons for not wanting to have a bar mitzvah changed and became stronger. It wasn’t just that it was a colossal waste of time—that time was already wasted, if you think about it. And it wasn’t even that I knew that lots of bad things were going to happen after my bar mitzvah, so the effort to stop my bar mitzvah from happening was actually an effort to stop all kinds of bad things from happening.
“You can’t stop things from happening. You can only choose not to be there, like Great-Grandpa Isaac did, or give yourself completely over, like my dad, who made his big decision to go to Israel to fight. Or maybe it’s Dad who is choosing not to be there, which is here, and Great-Grandpa who gave himself over completely.
“We read Hamlet in school this year, and everybody knows the whole ‘To be or not to be’ business, and we talked about it for like three consecutive classes—the choice between life and death, action and reflection, whatever and whatever. It was kind of going nowhere until my friend Billie said something incredibly smart. She said, ‘Isn’t there another option besides those two? Like, to mostly be or mostly not be, that is the question.’ And that got me thinking that also maybe one doesn’t have to exactly choose. ‘To be or not to be. That is the question.’ To be and not to be. That is the answer.
“My Israeli cousin Noam—that’s his dad, Tamir, over there—told me that a bar mitzvah isn’t something you have, but something you become. He was right, and he was wrong. A bar mitzvah is both something you have and something you become. I am obviously having a bar mitzvah today. I chanted my Torah portion and haftorah, and no one was holding a gun to my head. But I want to take this opportunity to make clear to everyone that I am not becoming one. I did not ask to be a man, and I do not want to be a man, and I refuse to be a man.
“Dad once told me a story about when he was a kid and there was a dead squirrel on the lawn. He watched Grandpa take care of it. After, he said to Grandpa, ‘I couldn’t have done that.’ And Grandpa said, ‘Sure you could.’ And Dad said, ‘I couldn’t.’ And Grandpa said, ‘When you’re a dad, there’s no one after you.’ And Dad said, ‘I still couldn’t do it.’ And Grandpa said, ‘The more you won’t want to do it, the more of a dad you’ll be.’ I don’t want to be like that, so I won’t.
“Now let me explain why I wrote all those words.”
O JEWS, YOUR TIME HAS COME!
“O Muslims, the hour is here! The war of God against the enemies of God will end in triumph! Victory in the Holy Land of Palestine is within the reach of the righteous. We will have our revenge for Lydda, we will have our revenge for Haifa and Acre and Deir Yassin, we will have our revenge for the generations of martyrs, we will have our revenge, praise Allah, for al-Quds! Oh, al-Quds, raped by the Jews, treated like a whore by the sons of pigs and apes, we will restore to you your crown and your glory!
“They burned Qubbat Al-Sakhra to the ground. But it is they who will be burned. I say to you today the words that filled the hearts of a thousand martyrs: ‘Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud, Jaish Muhammad Saouf Ya’ud!’ As the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon Him, defeated the perfidious Jews at Khaybar, so too will the armies of Muhammad inflict the final humiliation on the Jews today!
“O Jews, your time has come! Your fire will be met by fire! We will burn your cities and your towns, your schools and your hospitals, your every home! No Jew will be safe! I remind you, O Muslims, of what the Prophet, peace be upon Him, teaches us: that on Judgment Day even the stones and the trees will speak, with or without words, and say, ‘O servant of Allah, O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!’ ”
COME HOME
“ ‘Watch me,’ Gideon told his men, greatly outnumbered, facing the Midianites not far from where I now stand. ‘Follow my lead. When I get to the edge of the camp, do exactly as I do. When I and all who are with me blow our trumpets, then from all around the camp blow yours and shout, “For the Lord and for Gideon.” ’ At the sight and sound of our unity, the enemy scattered and fled.
“The majority of the Jewish people have chosen not to live in Israel, and Jews do not share any one set of political or religious beliefs, and do not share a culture or language. But we are in the same river of history.
“To the Jews of the world, those who came before you—your grandparents, your great-grandparents—and those who will come after you—your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren—are calling out: ‘Come home.’
“Come home not only because your home needs you, but because you need your home.
“Come home not only to fight for Israel’s survival, but to fight for your own.
“Come home because a people without a home is not a people, just as a person without a home is not a person.
“Come home not because you agree with everything Israel does, not because you think Israel is perfect, or even any better than other countries. Come home not because Israel is what you want it to be, but because it is yours.
“Come home, because history will remember what each of us chooses in this moment.
“Come home and we will win this war and establish a lasting peace.
“Come home and we will rebuild this state to be stronger and closer to
its promise than it was before the destruction.
“Come home and be another hand around the pen that writes the story of the Jewish people.
“Come home and hold the arms of Moses aloft. And then, when the guns have cooled, and the buildings have risen where they once stood, only prouder, and the streets are filled with the sounds of children playing, you will find your name not in the book of Lamentations, but the book of Life.
“And then, wherever you choose to go next, you will always be home.”
TODAY I AM NOT A MAN
“A couple of weeks ago, everybody was obsessing over what kind of apology I would give during my bar mitzvah speech. How would I explain my behavior? Would I even fess up to it? When I was being blamed, I didn’t feel like explaining myself, much less apologizing. But now that other things have taken everyone’s attention, and no one really cares anymore, I’d like to explain myself and apologize.
“My friend Billie, whom I mentioned before, told me I was repressed. She’s really beautiful, and intelligent, and good. I told her, ‘Maybe I just have inner peace.’ She said, ‘Peace between what parties?’ I thought that was such an interesting question.
“I told her, ‘I’m really not repressed.’ She said, ‘That’s exactly what a repressed person would say.’ So I said, ‘And I suppose you aren’t repressed?’ And she said, ‘Everyone is somewhat repressed.’ ‘OK,’ I said, ‘then I’m no more repressed than an average person.’
“ ‘Say the hardest thing,’ she said.
“I was like, ‘What?’
“And she said, ‘I don’t mean right this second. You couldn’t even know what it is without thinking long and hard about it. But once you figure it out, I dare you to say it.’
“ ‘And if I do?’
“ ‘You won’t.’
“ ‘But if.’
“She said, ‘I would invite you to choose the terms, but I know you’re too repressed to tell me what you’d actually want.’
“Which was obviously true.
“ ‘So maybe that’s actually the hardest thing to say,’ I said.
“She said, ‘What? That you want to kiss me? Doesn’t even make the top hundred.’
“I thought a lot about what she said. And I was thinking about it in Hebrew school that day when I wrote those words. I was just seeing how each of them felt, seeing how hard it was to write them, and say them to myself. That’s why I did it. But that’s not the point.
“The point is: I made a mistake. I thought that the worst thing to say was the hardest thing to say. But it’s actually pretty easy to say horrible things: retard, cunt, whatever. In a way, it’s even easier because we know exactly how bad the words are. There’s nothing scary about them. Part of what makes something really hard to say is the not knowing.
“The reason I’m here today is because I realized that the hardest thing to say isn’t a word, or a sentence, but an event. The hardest thing to say couldn’t be something you say to yourself. It requires the hardest person, or people, to say it to.”
O JEWS, YOUR TIME HAS COME!
“O Muslims, God demands of his servants the deaths of these Jews. I call on the soldiers of the Qur’an to wage our final battle against those beasts who kill the prophets. O Muslims, must I tell you the story of the Jewish woman who gave the Prophet, peace be upon Him, poisoned lamb, to kill Him? The Prophet, peace be upon Him, said to his companions, ‘Do not eat this lamb. It is telling me it has poison in it.’ But it was too late for the companion Bishr ibn al-Bara, who died from the poison. The Jewess tried to kill our Prophet, peace be upon Him, but praise God, she failed. This is the nature of the Jews, these twice-cursed people! They will try to kill you, but Allah will plant knowledge of their wicked deeds in your hearts, and save you. You must do as the Prophet, peace be upon Him, did with the Jew Kenana ibn al-Rabi, who hid the treasure of the Jews, the Banu Nadir. The Prophet, peace be upon Him, told Az-Zubair ibn Al-Awwam, ‘Torture this Jew until you learn from him what he knows.’ He held hot steel to his chest and he nearly died. And then the Prophet, peace be upon Him, delivered the Jew Kenana to Muhammad ibn Maslamah, and he cut off his head! Then he took the Jews of Kenana as slaves. Muhammad, peace be upon Him, took the most beautiful woman of the Jews for himself! This is the way, O Muslims! Let the Prophet be your teacher in your dealings with the Jews!
“O brother Palestinians! Remember! When the Muslims, the Arabs, the Palestinians, make war against the Jews, they do so to worship Allah. They enter the war as Muslims! The hadith does not say, ‘O Sunni, O Shiite, O Palestinian, O Syrian, O Persian, come fight.’ It says, ‘O Muslim’! For too long we have battled ourselves and lost. Now we will battle together and be victorious.
“We are fighting in the name of Islam, because Islam commands us to wage war unto death against anyone who plunders our land. Surrender is the way of Satan!”
COME HOME
But then, after his final word, the camera stayed on the prime minister. His gaze held. And the camera held. At first it seemed like an awkward broadcasting mistake, but it was no accident.
His gaze held.
And the camera held.
And then the prime minister did something so outrageously symbolic, so potentially kitschy, so many miles over the top, it risked breaking the legs of its intended recipients just as they approached the necessary leap of faith.
He removed a shofar from beneath the lectern. And without any explanation of its meaning—its biblical or historical significance, its intent to awaken sleeping Jews to repent and return, without even sharing that this particular shofar, this twice-curled ram’s horn, was two thousand years old, that it was the shofar discovered at Masada, stashed in a water hole and preserved by the dry desert heat, that its inside contained biological remnants of a noble Jewish martyr—he brought it to his lips.
The camera held.
The prime minister inhaled, and gathered into the ram’s horn the molecules of every Jew who had ever lived: the breath of warrior kings and fishmongers; tailors, matchmakers, and executive producers; kosher butchers, radical publishers, kibbutzniks, management consultants, orthopedic surgeons, tanners, and judges; the grateful laugh of someone with more than forty grandchildren gathered in his hospital room; the false moan of a prostitute who hid children under the bed on which she kissed Nazis on the mouth; the sigh of an ancient philosopher at a moment of understanding; the cry of a new orphan alone in a forest; the final air bubble to rise from the Seine and burst as Paul Celan sank, his pockets full of stones; the word clear from the lips of the first Jewish astronaut, strapped into a chair facing infinity. And the breath of those who never lived, but whose existence Jewish existence depended on: the patriarchs, matriarchs, and prophets; Abel’s last plea; Sarah’s laughter at the prospect of the miracle; Abraham offering his God and his son what could not be offered to both: “Here I am.”
The prime minister aimed the shofar forty-five degrees, sixty degrees, and in New York, and in Los Angeles, and in Miami, Chicago, and Paris, in London, Buenos Aires, Moscow, and Melbourne, television screens trembled, they shook.
TODAY I AM NOT A MAN
“The hardest thing to say is the hardest thing to hear: forced to choose between my parents, I would be able to.
“And I’ve talked about it with Max and Benjy, and if forced to choose, each of them could choose as well. Two of us would have chosen one, and one of us the other, but we agreed that if forced to choose, we would all choose the same one, so that we could stay together.
“When I did Model UN a couple of weeks ago, the country we were representing, Micronesia, suddenly came into possession of a nuclear weapon. We didn’t ask for a nuclear weapon, and didn’t want a nuclear weapon, and nuclear weapons are, in pretty much every way, horrible. But there’s a reason people have them, and it’s to never have to use them.
“That’s it. I’m finished.”
He didn’t bow, they didn’t clap. No one moved or spoke.
As always, Sa
m didn’t know what to do with his body. But the organism that was the roomful of family and friends seemed to depend on his movement. If he started to cry, someone would comfort him. If he ran out, someone would follow. If he’d just go talk to Max, everyone would schmooze. But if he continued to stand there, fists balled, they would continue to stand there.
Jacob thought maybe he could clap his hands, smile, and say something lame, like “Dig in!”
Julia thought maybe she could go to Sam, put her arm around him, and touch her head to his head.
Even Benjy, who, by virtue of never giving it any thought, always knew what to do, was motionless.
Irv longed to assume the authority of the family’s new patriarch, but he didn’t know how. Was there a five-dollar bill in his pocket?
From the middle of the room, Billie said, “Yet.”
Everyone turned to her.
“What?” Sam asked.
There was no sound to overcome, but she screamed: “Yet!”
O JEWS, YOUR TIME HAS COME!
The cheering would continue long after the Ayatollah lowered his final raised arm of solidarity. Long after he made his way behind the temporary stage, surrounded by a dozen plainclothes bodyguards. The cheering—the applauding, the chanting, the hollering, the singing—would continue after he was greeted by a line of his closest advisers, each kissing him, blessing him. After he was put into a car with two-inch-thick windows and no door handles and driven away. The cheering continued, and intensified, but without a gravitational center, the crowd moved outward in every direction.
Wolf Blitzer and his panel started discussing the speech—without the time to digest the translation, they just pulled quote after quote until they’d reassembled it out of order—but the camera stayed on the crowd. The mass of people couldn’t be contained by Azadi Square, which pumped them through the connecting streets like blood, and it couldn’t be contained by the camera’s frame.
Here I Am Page 46