Chapter 5: Babka's Shadows
Grandpa Sárossy used to say that he only survived the Shoah so he could kiss Babka’s hand one more time. Even at the age of 80, Grandma Babka had a nice hairdo, wore snakeskin high heels and changed her outfit several times a day, making sure her lipstick matched her cufflinks. She embraced the doctor on Pozsonyi Street or the grocery boy on Lehel Square or the dachshund-walking pensioners in Szent István Park with the same gentle, subtle smile. She was good and gracious like the great actress Klára Tolnay, her constant role model and fashion template. Only when somebody mentioned The Party, or when one of her old colleagues from her public radio days came to visit, would her eyes take on a dark, fiery glow.
“Do you know what a girl could do before the war? At best, become a teacher. Socialism has opened the doors for us; I could become a program director at the National Radio! Do you have any idea what that means, kis angyalom?” Grandma called me ‘my angel’ when she wanted to emphasize something. “I could enroll in the university! Me, the little Jew with the yellow star, locked in the Dob street ghetto, the girl who people spit at on the tram. Young people today cannot appreciate anything. They take everything for granted!”
“Let it go, mamele!” Grandpa Sárossy used to say. “The communists weren't any better than the nyilas[2]!” Then he’d tell the same sob story about how hard it was for him to enroll into university because he came from a well-to-do family. Despite their political quarrels, my grandparents were the only happy couple that I really knew. It was tough when Grandpa Sárossy passed away.
I wanted to go for a walk with Babka that day, maybe get some cakes in Hotel Béke’s pastry shop, but it didn’t happen because by the time I got to her house, it was pouring rain, and Babka wasn’t about to ruin her hairdo for a strudel.
I really liked her Szent István Park Square apartment with its solid furniture, designed for big, strong men. The items around the living room had been inherited by Grandpa Sárossy during happier, more peaceful times: the large mahogany desk, the paintings in their richly ornamented frames, the baby grand piano from Vienna, and the family’s gold-plated Herend porcelain set that always seemed to be missing more and more pieces. Grandpa Sárossy had been lucky because his family maid, Fáni, had not only hidden him among Christian children but heroically guarded the villa and its furniture in the Buda hills when the family’s grown-up members were deported. She had been generously compensated, of course, but this didn’t devaluate her heroic act in any way. I had met her only once, a small, wizened lady with a large cross around her neck. Babka pointed her out to me and whispered, “This is the one we pack those gift bags for every Christmas, Easter, and birthday.” In return, Fáni remembered Babka, Mother, and me on our birthdays, sending 20 Forint postcards featuring bouquets of roses and lilacs.
On this morning Babka, wore her polka dotted blue shirt and was smoking her umpteenth cigarette in her armchair. Through the window, she saw the Duna River sparkling in the rain. She’d already completed a crossword puzzle and two rounds of solitaire. Now she was reading the daily news and sipping her first espresso. Her lipstick stained the cup just as it had her snuffed-out cigarettes.
“I’ve been waiting for you. Nu, have some gerbeaud cake my dearest,” she said in her raspy voice. With shaky hands, she pushed a golden Herend plate under my nose. She always had freshly baked pastries from the bakery next door. Poor Babka, ever since she’d fallen on the sidewalk last year and broken her leg, she’d had a hard time getting around without her walker.
I wanted to let some fresh air in, but Babka barricaded her windows with geraniums, Christmas cacti, and thick window pillows in order to protect her slender bones from the draft. Babka had been cold ever since the war. Maybe she smoked so much because she hoped the smoldering ashes would keep her warm.
I lit a cigarette and went to the kitchen for coffee. Her espresso was strong like toxic sludge. Looking for creamer, I opened her pantry door. It seemed as though the huge stocks of blue and red bar soaps, matches, nylon bags, candles, flour, sugar, and canned goods might tumble down and bury me. Babka couldn’t be convinced that hoarding wouldn’t help if “worse times” came. She hadn’t noticed that more than half of her stored goods had already expired, that the upstairs neighbor’s leaking pipes had soaked her matches a couple of years ago or that half of the sugar had spilled out of the paper bags. But sure enough, she didn’t have any coffee creamer left. How many times had we tried to explain her that there were no wars on the horizon? How many times had we begged her to let us clean out her pantry? But to no avail. If I think about it, it’s not all that surprising that Babka’s cleaning lady gave up the fight against dust at her place a long time ago.
“I bet you haven’t even seen your Mother’s latest purchase! We bought it for you in a thrift store. You’re going to love it, kis angyalom,” she declared from the living room. When I closed the cupboard and walked through the doorway, she was holding a large turquoise pin between her fingers. Another piece of junk that I really didn’t need. Babka collected everything. Before her accident she and Mother had gone shopping once a week in order to fill every square inch of their apartments with antique junk. Babka was the worst; from hats to old papers and gramophones, she collected every “treasure” she saw. “Who knows when we make good use these?” she always argued. And of course, the majority of these knick-knacks ended up in the hands of who else but her only grandchild. I had nightmares already about the day when I would inherit it all, and the junk actually would bury me. Then I would spend days struggling with my conscience, filling garbage bags while feeling terribly guilty.
“Why don’t you buy yourself something instead? Spend your pension on a new coat or a scarf!” I suggested.
“Who should I buy things for, if not for you? But you can’t appreciate anything.”
“Material things are meaningless if life itself doesn’t have a meaning,” I said.
“What a philosopher you’ve become, almost like your dad,” she laughed.
“You never take me seriously,” I growled.
“Oh, sure I do. Who knows why are we living, kis angyalom? Maybe just for the sake of surviving today.”
“You think we’re living just in order to survive? Why should we make an effort to survive if the future doesn’t hold anything for us?” I wondered.
“Are you depressed?”
She was worried. I forced myself to laugh and that made her feel more relaxed.
A bit later my cell phone rang. It was the Belgian. I was afraid he’d say something harsh the way he had the night before
“I got your number from Robi.” He said in a seemingly cold tone. “I’m calling you to tell you I’m sorry for being so incorrect to you yesterday. Can you forgive me?”
Babka pretended to be deeply immersed in her newspaper, but I knew that she was eavesdropping, as she always if there was something in the air. Unfortunately, my phone was so loud that she could hear every word he said, “I’m sorry for being demanding and arrogant.”
I wasn’t angry at all. I couldn’t imagine him doing anything that could make me angry. Babka smiled and quietly said, “a real gentleman.”
“At least try to pretend you’re not listening!” I hissed back. I was losing my patience. She didn’t have a clue about privacy. I hated that no matter how hard I squeezed the phone against my ear, she could still hear us.
“Excuse me?” asked the Belgian.
“Oh, nothing.” I went to the kitchen.
“You know… I was hoping that the first emotion of the New Year would not be one of anger ... and of course … I need you,” he added. These three words sounded magical. I need you. So I wasn’t a disagreeable beast after all. “Could we meet up for coffee so you can tell me what’s happened in your life these past ten years? I’m actually free … even right now. I could meet you in a half an hour if you’d like.”
“Sure, I’ll be there.” Only after I hang up I did I remember that Babka probably expected a longer visit from me. It’s okay, Babka gestured with her hands. She’d caught up with me in the kitchen in the meantime “for a bit more coffee.” After I hung up she continued, “Don’t worry about me, sweet love. I’m old already. I always have time for you. You can take me to a coffee shop or on a walk any time you have absolutely nothing better to do. The only thing that matters is your happiness.” She smiled. “So tell me who is this young gentleman.”
“Nobody, just Gábor Földes from elementary school.”
“The very same one who gave you a balloon on May Day?”
“Well, we reconnected yesterday… but it doesn’t matter. He says I’m not honest enough with myself, and he hates our band too. He’s totally right. I’m going to leave the band. For now we made up just because he doesn’t want to start the New Year in anger!”
“The New Year is months away!” Babka waved dismissively with her cigarette holder.
“I’m talking about the Jewish New Year. That was yesterday.” I laughed, but Babka made a disappointed grimace.
“Let me tell you something, kis angyalom. That’s just an excuse for him to ask you out. Religious dogmas have been outdated for forty years now. I’m only concerned with progressive, modern things.” Her voice sounded condescending, but her alert glance waited to scrutinize my reaction. Something was off.
“Why are we not supposed to start the New Year in anger?” I wanted to find out whether the Belgian’s motivations were truly religious or if Babka was right.
“My parents were Orthodox, but I was a Communist already by the time I was fifteen years old. My brother Jóska and I left the Dob Street ghetto for Újlipótváros, a more modern neighborhood. I wasn’t interested in that kind of staff.”
“Why don’t you ever talk about your family?”
“There is nothing to tell, kis angyalom. Everyone had perished in Auschwitz except my brother Jóska, that stupid Pista, and myself.” She paused and began coughing so hard that tears sprang from her eyes. I thought she’d never stop, but after a while she took another sip of water and pointed to the wall. “Look at that picture—see how handsome Jóska was as a young fellow? You met him when you were little. He bought you licorice and honeycomb, but you probably don’t remember him, do you? He passed away in ’86. He was a really great guy.”
Apart from this picture, Babka didn’t have any family photos or treasures. I had only ever heard curses about Pista bácsi, because “that idiot” left in 1956 with the Zionists for Palestine. Babka had surely wanted Pista Sárossy to join the Communists, but “annoying troublemaker” that he was, he’d moved instead “to that Third World country” and hadn’t been too ashamed to marry a Moroccan woman who looked more Arabic than Jewish. He thought nothing of sending my dark-skinned cousin, Ari, to a Jewish summer camp in Szarvas, even though he didn’t have a Hungarian name or speak a word of Hungarian. Just to annoy Babka, Pista called regularly to talk her into moving to the Promised Land. But how could we visit him, when until 1989 we hadn’t been allowed to travel beyond Moscow?
“Where are your family pictures?”
“I tore them to pieces.” She wanted to look nonchalant, as though eradicating the past was the most natural thing in the world. She must have destroyed them in a moment of rage, though when I thought about it, I’d never seen her upset. Maybe this was just one of her usual evasive answers that she alternated with stubborn silence whenever I asked a family-related question that was important to me.
“So your parents were religious, huh?”
“I don’t really remember…”
“Sure. What is Yom Kippur?”
“You are asking me such strange questions today, sweet love. Why are you busy with such nonsense?” she grew visibly aggravated.
“Why not?” I passed the ball back. She looked deeply into my eyes and grabbed my wrist. Her skinny, little fingers were shaking more than usual.
“Don’t search for trouble my angel! We never—never—got anything but trouble from being Jews. Listen to me, kis angyalom.” She leaned close to my face. “You’d better not talk about it to anyone. You can’t even begin to imagine how much effort it took us to get rid of the yellow star.”
“What do you mean?”
“The nyilas came to our buildings to round up people who were wearing the yellow star. You have no idea how many years I spent hiding in cellars and unheated apartments where my pillows were torn-up parquets. I had to lie in corners, because the shooting lit up the room and people might notice that I was sleeping there. After a few nights, we always had to move on, because the Front had come closer or the neighbors would have turned us in. In 1944, I had to leave my identification and clothes on the Duna riverside and pretend that I’d thrown myself into the river. The Party gave me a new name and a new identity. If not for the communists, I would have never survived the war. We owe our lives to Communism.” I knew this speech like a well-worn recording, but I didn’t let her get away so easily.
“What is your real name?”
“Let’s drop this topic. This really doesn’t matter any more!”
“And what about Dad’s family, the Dallos? What was their original family name?” I asked.
“I think his Daddy’s name was Singer. Your Dad came to Budapest from some godforsaken village. He was an orphan, but he was witty and diligent. We gave him all the support he needed to become a successful historian.”
“And you’ve never wondered about what happened to the Dallos family in the camps? Who were they and how they died? How Dad became an orphan?”
“He has tried to find out, but he hasn’t uncovered much. What I’m saying is that you need to live in the present and build a brighter future, not grieve about the past all the time. Get this nonsense out of your mind!” Babka’s eyes reflected an ocean of pain. “And one more thing: don’t you even think about going to the synagogue again!”
My stomach was hurting, and I felt pressure building in my chest. I’d been robbed of my inheritance. What would I have given to meet the Dallos family just once.
“Your mother married a Jew, no matter how I tried to talk her out of it. And look at how unhappy she is! Tell me, are you asking all this nonsense from me because Földes talked you into it? Don’t start with a Jew! We’d better rinse this bad blood out of our family. You know what I mean, sweetheart?”
“Don’t worry, both of the Belgian’s parents are only half Jewish,” I began, but seeing Babka’s stubborn expression I shifted direction. “Anyway, what bad blood? There’s no such thing as bad blood. It doesn’t matter if somebody is a Jew, Spanish, Gypsy or Chinese,” I said and started to gather my things.
“You’re always disagreeing with me, never listening to my wise advice! Don’t you understand that in the old world, equality and brotherhood really existed, even if liberty didn’t! Back in the 1940s, MADISZ was more than just a communist youth group. It was a real community where you didn’t have to be afraid of being called a Jew, or excluded for being poor. But today the dice have fallen on the wrong side again, and there is a lot of whispering going around,” she said. She always spoke in semi-code. I had no idea what dice she meant or what whispers she was referring to. Maybe she was paranoid. I was packing with rapid movements, annoyed by her self-hatred and secrecy. It seemed as if Babka was relieved by my departure.
“Do you know what a girl could do before the war? At best, become a teacher. Socialism has opened the doors for us; I could become a program director at the National Radio! Do you have any idea what that means, kis angyalom?” Grandma called me ‘my angel’ when she wanted to emphasize something. “I could enroll in the university! Me, the little Jew with the yellow star, locked in the Dob street ghetto, the girl who people spit at on the tram. Young people today cannot appreciate anything. They take everything for granted!”
“Let it go, mamele!” Grandpa Sárossy used to say. “The communists weren't any better than the nyilas[2]!” Then he’d tell the same sob story about how hard it was for him to enroll into university because he came from a well-to-do family. Despite their political quarrels, my grandparents were the only happy couple that I really knew. It was tough when Grandpa Sárossy passed away.
I wanted to go for a walk with Babka that day, maybe get some cakes in Hotel Béke’s pastry shop, but it didn’t happen because by the time I got to her house, it was pouring rain, and Babka wasn’t about to ruin her hairdo for a strudel.
I really liked her Szent István Park Square apartment with its solid furniture, designed for big, strong men. The items around the living room had been inherited by Grandpa Sárossy during happier, more peaceful times: the large mahogany desk, the paintings in their richly ornamented frames, the baby grand piano from Vienna, and the family’s gold-plated Herend porcelain set that always seemed to be missing more and more pieces. Grandpa Sárossy had been lucky because his family maid, Fáni, had not only hidden him among Christian children but heroically guarded the villa and its furniture in the Buda hills when the family’s grown-up members were deported. She had been generously compensated, of course, but this didn’t devaluate her heroic act in any way. I had met her only once, a small, wizened lady with a large cross around her neck. Babka pointed her out to me and whispered, “This is the one we pack those gift bags for every Christmas, Easter, and birthday.” In return, Fáni remembered Babka, Mother, and me on our birthdays, sending 20 Forint postcards featuring bouquets of roses and lilacs.
On this morning Babka, wore her polka dotted blue shirt and was smoking her umpteenth cigarette in her armchair. Through the window, she saw the Duna River sparkling in the rain. She’d already completed a crossword puzzle and two rounds of solitaire. Now she was reading the daily news and sipping her first espresso. Her lipstick stained the cup just as it had her snuffed-out cigarettes.
“I’ve been waiting for you. Nu, have some gerbeaud cake my dearest,” she said in her raspy voice. With shaky hands, she pushed a golden Herend plate under my nose. She always had freshly baked pastries from the bakery next door. Poor Babka, ever since she’d fallen on the sidewalk last year and broken her leg, she’d had a hard time getting around without her walker.
I wanted to let some fresh air in, but Babka barricaded her windows with geraniums, Christmas cacti, and thick window pillows in order to protect her slender bones from the draft. Babka had been cold ever since the war. Maybe she smoked so much because she hoped the smoldering ashes would keep her warm.
I lit a cigarette and went to the kitchen for coffee. Her espresso was strong like toxic sludge. Looking for creamer, I opened her pantry door. It seemed as though the huge stocks of blue and red bar soaps, matches, nylon bags, candles, flour, sugar, and canned goods might tumble down and bury me. Babka couldn’t be convinced that hoarding wouldn’t help if “worse times” came. She hadn’t noticed that more than half of her stored goods had already expired, that the upstairs neighbor’s leaking pipes had soaked her matches a couple of years ago or that half of the sugar had spilled out of the paper bags. But sure enough, she didn’t have any coffee creamer left. How many times had we tried to explain her that there were no wars on the horizon? How many times had we begged her to let us clean out her pantry? But to no avail. If I think about it, it’s not all that surprising that Babka’s cleaning lady gave up the fight against dust at her place a long time ago.
“I bet you haven’t even seen your Mother’s latest purchase! We bought it for you in a thrift store. You’re going to love it, kis angyalom,” she declared from the living room. When I closed the cupboard and walked through the doorway, she was holding a large turquoise pin between her fingers. Another piece of junk that I really didn’t need. Babka collected everything. Before her accident she and Mother had gone shopping once a week in order to fill every square inch of their apartments with antique junk. Babka was the worst; from hats to old papers and gramophones, she collected every “treasure” she saw. “Who knows when we make good use these?” she always argued. And of course, the majority of these knick-knacks ended up in the hands of who else but her only grandchild. I had nightmares already about the day when I would inherit it all, and the junk actually would bury me. Then I would spend days struggling with my conscience, filling garbage bags while feeling terribly guilty.
“Why don’t you buy yourself something instead? Spend your pension on a new coat or a scarf!” I suggested.
“Who should I buy things for, if not for you? But you can’t appreciate anything.”
“Material things are meaningless if life itself doesn’t have a meaning,” I said.
“What a philosopher you’ve become, almost like your dad,” she laughed.
“You never take me seriously,” I growled.
“Oh, sure I do. Who knows why are we living, kis angyalom? Maybe just for the sake of surviving today.”
“You think we’re living just in order to survive? Why should we make an effort to survive if the future doesn’t hold anything for us?” I wondered.
“Are you depressed?”
She was worried. I forced myself to laugh and that made her feel more relaxed.
A bit later my cell phone rang. It was the Belgian. I was afraid he’d say something harsh the way he had the night before
“I got your number from Robi.” He said in a seemingly cold tone. “I’m calling you to tell you I’m sorry for being so incorrect to you yesterday. Can you forgive me?”
Babka pretended to be deeply immersed in her newspaper, but I knew that she was eavesdropping, as she always if there was something in the air. Unfortunately, my phone was so loud that she could hear every word he said, “I’m sorry for being demanding and arrogant.”
I wasn’t angry at all. I couldn’t imagine him doing anything that could make me angry. Babka smiled and quietly said, “a real gentleman.”
“At least try to pretend you’re not listening!” I hissed back. I was losing my patience. She didn’t have a clue about privacy. I hated that no matter how hard I squeezed the phone against my ear, she could still hear us.
“Excuse me?” asked the Belgian.
“Oh, nothing.” I went to the kitchen.
“You know… I was hoping that the first emotion of the New Year would not be one of anger ... and of course … I need you,” he added. These three words sounded magical. I need you. So I wasn’t a disagreeable beast after all. “Could we meet up for coffee so you can tell me what’s happened in your life these past ten years? I’m actually free … even right now. I could meet you in a half an hour if you’d like.”
“Sure, I’ll be there.” Only after I hang up I did I remember that Babka probably expected a longer visit from me. It’s okay, Babka gestured with her hands. She’d caught up with me in the kitchen in the meantime “for a bit more coffee.” After I hung up she continued, “Don’t worry about me, sweet love. I’m old already. I always have time for you. You can take me to a coffee shop or on a walk any time you have absolutely nothing better to do. The only thing that matters is your happiness.” She smiled. “So tell me who is this young gentleman.”
“Nobody, just Gábor Földes from elementary school.”
“The very same one who gave you a balloon on May Day?”
“Well, we reconnected yesterday… but it doesn’t matter. He says I’m not honest enough with myself, and he hates our band too. He’s totally right. I’m going to leave the band. For now we made up just because he doesn’t want to start the New Year in anger!”
“The New Year is months away!” Babka waved dismissively with her cigarette holder.
“I’m talking about the Jewish New Year. That was yesterday.” I laughed, but Babka made a disappointed grimace.
“Let me tell you something, kis angyalom. That’s just an excuse for him to ask you out. Religious dogmas have been outdated for forty years now. I’m only concerned with progressive, modern things.” Her voice sounded condescending, but her alert glance waited to scrutinize my reaction. Something was off.
“Why are we not supposed to start the New Year in anger?” I wanted to find out whether the Belgian’s motivations were truly religious or if Babka was right.
“My parents were Orthodox, but I was a Communist already by the time I was fifteen years old. My brother Jóska and I left the Dob Street ghetto for Újlipótváros, a more modern neighborhood. I wasn’t interested in that kind of staff.”
“Why don’t you ever talk about your family?”
“There is nothing to tell, kis angyalom. Everyone had perished in Auschwitz except my brother Jóska, that stupid Pista, and myself.” She paused and began coughing so hard that tears sprang from her eyes. I thought she’d never stop, but after a while she took another sip of water and pointed to the wall. “Look at that picture—see how handsome Jóska was as a young fellow? You met him when you were little. He bought you licorice and honeycomb, but you probably don’t remember him, do you? He passed away in ’86. He was a really great guy.”
Apart from this picture, Babka didn’t have any family photos or treasures. I had only ever heard curses about Pista bácsi, because “that idiot” left in 1956 with the Zionists for Palestine. Babka had surely wanted Pista Sárossy to join the Communists, but “annoying troublemaker” that he was, he’d moved instead “to that Third World country” and hadn’t been too ashamed to marry a Moroccan woman who looked more Arabic than Jewish. He thought nothing of sending my dark-skinned cousin, Ari, to a Jewish summer camp in Szarvas, even though he didn’t have a Hungarian name or speak a word of Hungarian. Just to annoy Babka, Pista called regularly to talk her into moving to the Promised Land. But how could we visit him, when until 1989 we hadn’t been allowed to travel beyond Moscow?
“Where are your family pictures?”
“I tore them to pieces.” She wanted to look nonchalant, as though eradicating the past was the most natural thing in the world. She must have destroyed them in a moment of rage, though when I thought about it, I’d never seen her upset. Maybe this was just one of her usual evasive answers that she alternated with stubborn silence whenever I asked a family-related question that was important to me.
“So your parents were religious, huh?”
“I don’t really remember…”
“Sure. What is Yom Kippur?”
“You are asking me such strange questions today, sweet love. Why are you busy with such nonsense?” she grew visibly aggravated.
“Why not?” I passed the ball back. She looked deeply into my eyes and grabbed my wrist. Her skinny, little fingers were shaking more than usual.
“Don’t search for trouble my angel! We never—never—got anything but trouble from being Jews. Listen to me, kis angyalom.” She leaned close to my face. “You’d better not talk about it to anyone. You can’t even begin to imagine how much effort it took us to get rid of the yellow star.”
“What do you mean?”
“The nyilas came to our buildings to round up people who were wearing the yellow star. You have no idea how many years I spent hiding in cellars and unheated apartments where my pillows were torn-up parquets. I had to lie in corners, because the shooting lit up the room and people might notice that I was sleeping there. After a few nights, we always had to move on, because the Front had come closer or the neighbors would have turned us in. In 1944, I had to leave my identification and clothes on the Duna riverside and pretend that I’d thrown myself into the river. The Party gave me a new name and a new identity. If not for the communists, I would have never survived the war. We owe our lives to Communism.” I knew this speech like a well-worn recording, but I didn’t let her get away so easily.
“What is your real name?”
“Let’s drop this topic. This really doesn’t matter any more!”
“And what about Dad’s family, the Dallos? What was their original family name?” I asked.
“I think his Daddy’s name was Singer. Your Dad came to Budapest from some godforsaken village. He was an orphan, but he was witty and diligent. We gave him all the support he needed to become a successful historian.”
“And you’ve never wondered about what happened to the Dallos family in the camps? Who were they and how they died? How Dad became an orphan?”
“He has tried to find out, but he hasn’t uncovered much. What I’m saying is that you need to live in the present and build a brighter future, not grieve about the past all the time. Get this nonsense out of your mind!” Babka’s eyes reflected an ocean of pain. “And one more thing: don’t you even think about going to the synagogue again!”
My stomach was hurting, and I felt pressure building in my chest. I’d been robbed of my inheritance. What would I have given to meet the Dallos family just once.
“Your mother married a Jew, no matter how I tried to talk her out of it. And look at how unhappy she is! Tell me, are you asking all this nonsense from me because Földes talked you into it? Don’t start with a Jew! We’d better rinse this bad blood out of our family. You know what I mean, sweetheart?”
“Don’t worry, both of the Belgian’s parents are only half Jewish,” I began, but seeing Babka’s stubborn expression I shifted direction. “Anyway, what bad blood? There’s no such thing as bad blood. It doesn’t matter if somebody is a Jew, Spanish, Gypsy or Chinese,” I said and started to gather my things.
“You’re always disagreeing with me, never listening to my wise advice! Don’t you understand that in the old world, equality and brotherhood really existed, even if liberty didn’t! Back in the 1940s, MADISZ was more than just a communist youth group. It was a real community where you didn’t have to be afraid of being called a Jew, or excluded for being poor. But today the dice have fallen on the wrong side again, and there is a lot of whispering going around,” she said. She always spoke in semi-code. I had no idea what dice she meant or what whispers she was referring to. Maybe she was paranoid. I was packing with rapid movements, annoyed by her self-hatred and secrecy. It seemed as if Babka was relieved by my departure.
Chapter 24: The Surfing Rabbi and His Barbie
A few blocks later, we reached the richly ornamented wrought-iron gate of the hostel. Inside the courtyard, white oleanders bloomed in planters. The lawn seemed to have been freshly watered, because I could smell the earth. Jonathan gave us a tour of the building and then led us toward the dining hall, a big room that doubled as a library. The hostel’s large, gothic arches reminded me of an ancient medieval inn. It was the sort of place where wayfarers in a movie would rest during a long journey—where everything revolved around the barmaid’s apron and the yellowed books of wandering pilgrims. In this particular Holy City inn, of course there was no bar or barmaid to be found, but a rebbetzin who looked alluring even in a wig. She was distributing Moroccan chicken with couscous and Coke to other spiritual seekers like ourselves. Behind a long table, her chubby husband, wearing side locks and black silk caftan waved cheerfully and motioned for us to come closer. He looked peculiar with his bright orange California-style flip-flops showing underneath the cuffs of his pants. His hair flowed down under his kippah, reaching his shoulders, and he had an earring in his left ear. He looked like a surfer dressing up as an Orthodox Jew for Purim. His gaze was unusually amicable and upbeat, and his face radiated benevolence. There was something safe and positive in his appearance that colored the whole scene at the hostel in a merrier hue.
“Well, here is the Surfing Rabbi, my bro, who has brought a lot of young people back to Yiddishkeit! As you’ll see,” Jonathan added with an enthusiastic twinkle, “he’s really cool.” The rabbi reciprocated with a bright smile and a wink, as though he had just bumped into his brother on the beach. The Belgian seemed puzzled that this stranger could be a rabbi and a surfer at the same time.
“Yeah, the waves are awesome in Tel-Aviv, and in the south, too,” the Surfer Rabbi was saying. “But once a month, I fly back to L.A., because I’d shrivel up and die without the Pacific Ocean.” As he spoke, he chewed his gum and blew pink bubbles. This was not how I’d imagined mystical Kabbalists in the Old City. In fact, I hadn’t even been sure they actually existed.
“Rabbi Nachum makes movies in Hollywood. He organizes bar mitzvot on the beach and kosher camps in Mexico,” Jonathan said so proudly that the Belgian let out a loud, brusque laugh. But my preconceived notions about religious Jews were being dismantled. This guy could not be pigeonholed.
“Do you teach girls too?” I asked because it was hard to imagine this rabbi with female students when I glanced at the rebbetzin in her wig and her long-sleeved dress that covered her knees. Deep down, I was wondering whether I could still go to the beach if I became religious and dressed in the modest, if stylish, way that she did.
“Yeah, that’s trickier,” he said with a wide smile and gently tugged on his beard. “Most religious girls would only surf if they could wear socks and a long dress. Those pantyhose are slippery, and that would make navigation iffy. But if they asked me to teach them, I’d be in for sure.”
“I love big waves, too,” said a Rastafarian guy with waist-long dreds and an Australian accent. He wore pants from India, a white linen shirt, and Teva sandals; the medallion hanging around his neck was stamped with the image of a marijuana leaf. I couldn’t tell whether it was the magic of Jerusalem or the ganja that made his emerald-green eyes so spacy.
“I could tell you all about that, brother,” said the rabbi with similar enthusiasm. “Man, the way the ocean connects our souls with the infinite… you know, the collective subconscious, and all that. G-d! It’s the best, the highest of the high of religious experiences when you overcome your body and become one with the ocean. It doesn’t matter how religious you are. The eternal splendor touches everyone.”
From the other end of the hall, the rebbetzin gestured for us to serve ourselves. Next to shelves that sagged under the weight of Hebrew and English language books was a large table laden with cookies, coffee, tea, soft drinks, salads, and the couscous and chicken that the innkeeper’s wife had prepared for modern day wayfarers. We feasted on all of it.
“Kosher Barbie,” the Belgian whispered with a chuckle as he watched the rebbetzin move back and forth across the room. She really was a doll, her long wig made of beautiful, smooth, flaxen hair. Everything about her was astonishing. Her perfect figure was covered by a cute, fashionable dress, though of course it didn’t cling too tightly. Her feet were fitted into stiletto-heeled shoes decorated with rhinestones, and her eyes were accentuated by smoky, sexy makeup. She looked as though she had flown to Jerusalem straight from Hollywood.
“I can surmise that these dummies aren’t likely to be gematria masters,” said the Belgian a little too loudly. Embarrassed, I smiled at the rebbetzin with a mouth full of cake. Who ever said a woman couldn’t be a worthy companion for a Kabbalist just because she was gorgeous?
“Don’t judge people by their looks. This is a different culture. Anyway, we shouldn’t have been so freaked out by this whole thing.”
“Oh, just wait and see,” he said. I had to laugh.
I didn’t catch everyone’s names, but there were Canadians, Israelis, South-Africans, Russians, and Turks among the guests. The Belgian sat next to the Rastafarian and I hoped he would find out where we could find some weed close by. A guy was playing guitar in the background, but the others turned to the rabbi who resumed the lecture that seemed to have been disrupted by our arrival.
“We were just talking about the way the Kabbalists explain illness and suffering,” the Rabbi said on a more serious tone. Taking a closer look at the thoughtful wrinkles across his forehead, the idea that such a jovial rabbi could know the deeply kept secret of the Kabbalists no longer seemed so bizarre.
“We were saying that G-d created humans in the image of his own form.” He pointed at his own body proudly. He blew a large bubble with his gum, and then held up an old, golden-covered book opened to a picture. The esoteric image depicted ten spheres in the shape of a human body. The heart of the body was tiferet, beauty, located in the center of the chest. The divine energy, the rabbi explained, flowed to us through these sephirot. If we received it directly, we wouldn’t be able to stand its strength. But the sephirot formed the Eitz Chayim, the Tree of Life, which also symbolized the Torah. The body was the embodiment of our soul’s five levels. The body had been created in the image of the soul.
I wasn’t quite sure if I grasped everything he spoke about. It was completely quiet nevertheless in the room as everyone else anticipated the Surfing Rabbi’s conclusion.
“If spiritually—meaning in the spiritual world—something is not right, sooner or later it will show in the physical. The body gives a sign. It gets sick, dude. Accidents do not happen by chance! That’s a ridiculous thought. Everything is directed by G-d, every trouble we face is a message: Hey, brother, stop for a sec! Think about the whys. Illness is a warning that something is really wrong in one of the sephirot.”
“Maybe the Secret does not even exist, hunny bunny” the Belgian whispered bitterly. “Maybe this quest of ours is like Dorothy’s trip to see the Wizard of Oz. Her friends were hoping to get a heart, or courage, or a brain, but the man behind the curtain was just an average Joe.”
“I always figured that the point of the whole story was that the everyone can heal themselves and the world. The Lion did receive courage, the Tin Man got the heart and the Scarecrow the brain, and Dorothy finally found her way home on the Yellow Brick Road. Who cares who was sitting behind the curtain?” I said. The Belgian looked puzzled.
“Dude, your explanation doesn’t work at all when you think about all the illnesses that exist in the world,” complained a guy in a checkered shirt and torn jeans who had been playing guitar. He was obviously stoned, but the rabbi patiently answered him.
“You’re right, man, that’s what I wanted to talk about. Adam, the first person, had a perfect soul and body. He could have lived forever in the Garden of Eden if he hadn’t screwed it up and fallen into sin. There was only one thing he was not supposed to do: to eat from the Tree of Good and Evil. He had only one commandment, not 613 like us, but he couldn’t even keep that one. He’d been seduced by the dark side like Darth Vader!”
“This smells like Hollywood to me,” whispered the Belgian in disapproval. I’d heard the tale about the apple, the snake, and the fig leaf a lot of times, but I couldn’t imagine that humanity really originated from one person and women that all had emerged from the side ribs of men.
“It’s obvious that Adam didn’t just bite into any fruit. The story is about how Good and Evil became relative in the eyes of Adam. He totally lost his clairvoyance. He couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Humanity has been in darkness ever since. Don’t imagine Adam as a simple Yid. G-d is not an old man with long beard, either. The Garden of Eden exists on another plane—in one of the four worlds, in a dimension higher than ours that we can’t even perceive.”
“Speak for yourself,” laughed the Belgian, but the rabbi heard him.
“Wow, dude, you’re surely not too short of self-confidence,” he snapped, clicking with his tongue. “The only trouble with your attitude is that without some humility you won’t get any further than yourself, which is not that much. Rabbi Simcha Bunem of Przysucha taught that everyone should put a different note in each pocket, and always reach into a different one. When he’s down and lonely, he should find these words in his left pocket, ‘Bishvili nivra ha’olam,’ meaning ‘The world was created for me.’ But when he’s feeling high and mighty, he should reach into his right pocket and read the note saying, ‘Ani efer v’afar,’—‘I am but dust and ashes.’”
“Quoting Umberto Eco, books were not written to be blindly followed but rather to be observed. If you have a problem with my trust in my own judgment and that I don’t echo every word of the Bible, then we have no business with each other,” said the Belgian.
“Dude, do what you’d like. You can quote any book on earth, you could learn from anyone for all I care, but the Torah is different: it contains divine wisdom. The eternal truth. Human knowledge keeps on changing. A few hundred years ago, people thought that the Earth was flat. That’s how much you can trust science.”
The Belgian grimaced even more broadly. Science was everything to him. But I was wondering, what if I couldn’t trust science either, what if a paradigm could be overcome by another paradigm always? That sounded post-postmodern to me. If the boundaries became so blurry, where did rationality end, what was reality and how could one define normalcy?
“If you don’t believe in G-d, at least give a little credit to the wisdom our rabbis accumulated through the centuries. That’s what you owe to your elders,” said the Surfer.
But the Belgian just shook his head. He hated this discourse. I knew he worried that if you let go of control, you became easily manipulated and that was that: you were brainwashed. I also didn’t understand why we should give any credit to some medieval rabbis, but I remembered my Grandpa Singer. How different my life would have been if the Nazis hadn’t have deprived me of him. Of course until now we’d only trusted ourselves, and not our parents or teachers, above all not any sort of rabbinical authorities. On the other hand, there was nothing wrong with thinking once in a while about something radically different. After all, growing up was all about finding our own voice.
“If you were born a Jew and you are in the Holy City, you at least owe it to yourself to listen to this one lecture. Of course, if a piece of your soul wasn’t looking for this, G-d wouldn’t have led you here anyway,” said the rabbi. The Belgian shook his legs nervously. “By the way Moses was the most humble man on earth, the prophet of prophets. He had experienced G-d on the highest level and his radiance grew so strong that he became like the sun. He had to wear a mask because most people couldn’t even lay eyes on him. Can you imagine how great G-d is, if we can’t even glance at a person who has seen him?”
Maybe Darth Vader, Moses, and the Wizard of Oz hid themselves behind masks because they represented something larger than themselves. But if G-d was an energy field, why did it matter if we lived a religious life? I was wondering.
“Adam is a prototype—like the endless ocean, every human being’s soul is contained in something like water drops. There are 600,000 Jewish souls on earth, and we receive pieces of it. We came to this world to elevate our own little soul-drop by perfecting our world.”
“How would you respond to this statement by the Hungarian poet, Attila József: ‘A sick world forces its sickening philosophies on me and then labels me sick,’” asked the Belgian.
“We need to heal the soul of the universe together; everyone has to take part in it. Healing should begin with ourselves. We need to reach into the most painful, sore spots and clean out the pus.”
This sounded brutal. It would be easier to stay on the surface, living happily without troubling ourselves much, like Flóra did. Why did I always have to associate myself with losers from Thomas Mann and Herman Hesse novels instead of ones that are all right? If I were at least an artist, writer, or philosopher—but I was just a useless little psychology student.
A girl in blue lipstick, wearing an anarchist T-shirt, asked in a hoarse voice what I’d wanted to bring up next: “What makes people so sad that they don’t even want to live any longer?”
The rabbi’s eyes were filled with compassion, and his words touched me, like a long-awaited hug. “The divine plan is like a carpet whose pattern we can only see from below. We can’t understand reality in its entirety. When someone is lost in their own little universe, they can’t grasp the larger patterns. Depressed people don’t see that the world and G-d are unconditionally benevolent. They can’t see the forest for the trees: even if some moments seem unbearably hard, you can’t give up, because there is a happy end. Everything has a reason, and everything bad has a core of goodness in it. That’s what the note in our right hand pocket reminds us.”
“That’s bullshit. I can’t believe that all this misery in the world serves a higher good. Victims of the Holocaust wouldn’t buy into your explanation,” said the girl with the blue lipstick, and the Belgian nodded approvingly.
“There are many different ways to get closer to G-d. The wise learn Torah and reflect. But the foolish learn lessons by screwing up over and over again. If people get sick or suffer from tragedies, they fall out of their routines. They are forced to reflect and get a chance to wake up and learn the lessons that they should have known better before. Similar situations keep on recurring until people do what they are supposed to do. So ‘Why is G-d punishing me?’ isn’t the right question. One should wonder, ‘How can I turn this experience into a tool for improving myself?’”
According to his philosophy, my suicide attempt and acid reflux were good things deep down. Maybe they were warnings for me to finally start living my own life. But I didn’t see any real alternatives out there. I looked at the Belgian, but he was talking to a pothead.
“Surfer, your theory doesn’t explain the death of innocent kids,” said the guitar player. I started feeling sorry for the rabbi.
“How can you stand all these loudmouths?” I whispered to the rebbetzin.
“We love all of G-d’s creatures: we don’t judge a Jew according to his behavior, but by what he has the potential to become,” she said kindly. It was a corny sentiment, but it did touch me that there were people out there who were able to accept and love everybody.
“They must be motivated to do this for financial gain,” said the Belgian to me in Hungarian. I didn’t understand the logic of their actions. I also couldn’t believe that G-d was good. Maybe the whole world was just a bad joke and our lives were pointless. We were just creating all these theories to find a meaning of the imperceptible.
“We need to do what our karma dictates,” said the rabbi with tiredness in his voice.
“So we believe in reincarnation?” I was stunned.
“Sure we do,” said the rabbi, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Every nation has a task: Israel, the Torah, and the Holy Land are inseparable. But as long as there are so many self-hating Jews who don’t realize they need to keep G-d’s commandments and return to their ancestors’ land, there will not be peace here. Our suffering will end only when we realize, we are ‘am segula’, G-d’s chosen people. ‘Segula’ means triangle—its sides consist of the Land, the People, and the Torah. When the upper and lower worlds meet, the Star of David is created. The star also symbolizes G-d’s dominion over the world. According to the Kabbalah, the two triangles also symbolize human duality: good and bad, spirituality and physicality. The triangle pointing upward stands for our good deeds influencing heaven above, while the triangles pointing downwards symbolizes blessings filtering through.”
I was saturated with new information, and by the end I could not follow much. After this long lecture, the group sang an Eastern European–sounding niggun. The guy with the guitar played while the girl with the blue lipstick beat along on bongo drums. The song was like a mantra, drawing us into its world. The others had closed their eyes, but when I looked at the rabbi, he seemed almost like a transformed man. Even if I couldn’t understand all his words, filtering them through my heart by singing along gave them meaning on a much higher level. “It is only with the heart that one can see correctly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” I cherished the Fox’s words from The Little Prince. After the song the guy with the marijuana leaf necklace turned to us and said, “Man, I just understood what oneness means. Creation’s purpose is one, because G-d is perfectly good. Evil just seems like evil, because all is one. That’s why everything is good.”
“Wow, that’s really deep,” said the girl with the blue lipstick, and the others seemed to agree. The Belgian and I looked at each other and laughed. My soul was happy: no matter how weird this whole group had been, I was definitely feeling great here.
We took Jonathan up on his offer and moved our stuff that day to the Surfing Rabbi’s. Girls and boys had to sleep in separate buildings, but I didn’t think it was such a big sacrifice for a few days in exchange for this once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
“Well, here is the Surfing Rabbi, my bro, who has brought a lot of young people back to Yiddishkeit! As you’ll see,” Jonathan added with an enthusiastic twinkle, “he’s really cool.” The rabbi reciprocated with a bright smile and a wink, as though he had just bumped into his brother on the beach. The Belgian seemed puzzled that this stranger could be a rabbi and a surfer at the same time.
“Yeah, the waves are awesome in Tel-Aviv, and in the south, too,” the Surfer Rabbi was saying. “But once a month, I fly back to L.A., because I’d shrivel up and die without the Pacific Ocean.” As he spoke, he chewed his gum and blew pink bubbles. This was not how I’d imagined mystical Kabbalists in the Old City. In fact, I hadn’t even been sure they actually existed.
“Rabbi Nachum makes movies in Hollywood. He organizes bar mitzvot on the beach and kosher camps in Mexico,” Jonathan said so proudly that the Belgian let out a loud, brusque laugh. But my preconceived notions about religious Jews were being dismantled. This guy could not be pigeonholed.
“Do you teach girls too?” I asked because it was hard to imagine this rabbi with female students when I glanced at the rebbetzin in her wig and her long-sleeved dress that covered her knees. Deep down, I was wondering whether I could still go to the beach if I became religious and dressed in the modest, if stylish, way that she did.
“Yeah, that’s trickier,” he said with a wide smile and gently tugged on his beard. “Most religious girls would only surf if they could wear socks and a long dress. Those pantyhose are slippery, and that would make navigation iffy. But if they asked me to teach them, I’d be in for sure.”
“I love big waves, too,” said a Rastafarian guy with waist-long dreds and an Australian accent. He wore pants from India, a white linen shirt, and Teva sandals; the medallion hanging around his neck was stamped with the image of a marijuana leaf. I couldn’t tell whether it was the magic of Jerusalem or the ganja that made his emerald-green eyes so spacy.
“I could tell you all about that, brother,” said the rabbi with similar enthusiasm. “Man, the way the ocean connects our souls with the infinite… you know, the collective subconscious, and all that. G-d! It’s the best, the highest of the high of religious experiences when you overcome your body and become one with the ocean. It doesn’t matter how religious you are. The eternal splendor touches everyone.”
From the other end of the hall, the rebbetzin gestured for us to serve ourselves. Next to shelves that sagged under the weight of Hebrew and English language books was a large table laden with cookies, coffee, tea, soft drinks, salads, and the couscous and chicken that the innkeeper’s wife had prepared for modern day wayfarers. We feasted on all of it.
“Kosher Barbie,” the Belgian whispered with a chuckle as he watched the rebbetzin move back and forth across the room. She really was a doll, her long wig made of beautiful, smooth, flaxen hair. Everything about her was astonishing. Her perfect figure was covered by a cute, fashionable dress, though of course it didn’t cling too tightly. Her feet were fitted into stiletto-heeled shoes decorated with rhinestones, and her eyes were accentuated by smoky, sexy makeup. She looked as though she had flown to Jerusalem straight from Hollywood.
“I can surmise that these dummies aren’t likely to be gematria masters,” said the Belgian a little too loudly. Embarrassed, I smiled at the rebbetzin with a mouth full of cake. Who ever said a woman couldn’t be a worthy companion for a Kabbalist just because she was gorgeous?
“Don’t judge people by their looks. This is a different culture. Anyway, we shouldn’t have been so freaked out by this whole thing.”
“Oh, just wait and see,” he said. I had to laugh.
I didn’t catch everyone’s names, but there were Canadians, Israelis, South-Africans, Russians, and Turks among the guests. The Belgian sat next to the Rastafarian and I hoped he would find out where we could find some weed close by. A guy was playing guitar in the background, but the others turned to the rabbi who resumed the lecture that seemed to have been disrupted by our arrival.
“We were just talking about the way the Kabbalists explain illness and suffering,” the Rabbi said on a more serious tone. Taking a closer look at the thoughtful wrinkles across his forehead, the idea that such a jovial rabbi could know the deeply kept secret of the Kabbalists no longer seemed so bizarre.
“We were saying that G-d created humans in the image of his own form.” He pointed at his own body proudly. He blew a large bubble with his gum, and then held up an old, golden-covered book opened to a picture. The esoteric image depicted ten spheres in the shape of a human body. The heart of the body was tiferet, beauty, located in the center of the chest. The divine energy, the rabbi explained, flowed to us through these sephirot. If we received it directly, we wouldn’t be able to stand its strength. But the sephirot formed the Eitz Chayim, the Tree of Life, which also symbolized the Torah. The body was the embodiment of our soul’s five levels. The body had been created in the image of the soul.
I wasn’t quite sure if I grasped everything he spoke about. It was completely quiet nevertheless in the room as everyone else anticipated the Surfing Rabbi’s conclusion.
“If spiritually—meaning in the spiritual world—something is not right, sooner or later it will show in the physical. The body gives a sign. It gets sick, dude. Accidents do not happen by chance! That’s a ridiculous thought. Everything is directed by G-d, every trouble we face is a message: Hey, brother, stop for a sec! Think about the whys. Illness is a warning that something is really wrong in one of the sephirot.”
“Maybe the Secret does not even exist, hunny bunny” the Belgian whispered bitterly. “Maybe this quest of ours is like Dorothy’s trip to see the Wizard of Oz. Her friends were hoping to get a heart, or courage, or a brain, but the man behind the curtain was just an average Joe.”
“I always figured that the point of the whole story was that the everyone can heal themselves and the world. The Lion did receive courage, the Tin Man got the heart and the Scarecrow the brain, and Dorothy finally found her way home on the Yellow Brick Road. Who cares who was sitting behind the curtain?” I said. The Belgian looked puzzled.
“Dude, your explanation doesn’t work at all when you think about all the illnesses that exist in the world,” complained a guy in a checkered shirt and torn jeans who had been playing guitar. He was obviously stoned, but the rabbi patiently answered him.
“You’re right, man, that’s what I wanted to talk about. Adam, the first person, had a perfect soul and body. He could have lived forever in the Garden of Eden if he hadn’t screwed it up and fallen into sin. There was only one thing he was not supposed to do: to eat from the Tree of Good and Evil. He had only one commandment, not 613 like us, but he couldn’t even keep that one. He’d been seduced by the dark side like Darth Vader!”
“This smells like Hollywood to me,” whispered the Belgian in disapproval. I’d heard the tale about the apple, the snake, and the fig leaf a lot of times, but I couldn’t imagine that humanity really originated from one person and women that all had emerged from the side ribs of men.
“It’s obvious that Adam didn’t just bite into any fruit. The story is about how Good and Evil became relative in the eyes of Adam. He totally lost his clairvoyance. He couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Humanity has been in darkness ever since. Don’t imagine Adam as a simple Yid. G-d is not an old man with long beard, either. The Garden of Eden exists on another plane—in one of the four worlds, in a dimension higher than ours that we can’t even perceive.”
“Speak for yourself,” laughed the Belgian, but the rabbi heard him.
“Wow, dude, you’re surely not too short of self-confidence,” he snapped, clicking with his tongue. “The only trouble with your attitude is that without some humility you won’t get any further than yourself, which is not that much. Rabbi Simcha Bunem of Przysucha taught that everyone should put a different note in each pocket, and always reach into a different one. When he’s down and lonely, he should find these words in his left pocket, ‘Bishvili nivra ha’olam,’ meaning ‘The world was created for me.’ But when he’s feeling high and mighty, he should reach into his right pocket and read the note saying, ‘Ani efer v’afar,’—‘I am but dust and ashes.’”
“Quoting Umberto Eco, books were not written to be blindly followed but rather to be observed. If you have a problem with my trust in my own judgment and that I don’t echo every word of the Bible, then we have no business with each other,” said the Belgian.
“Dude, do what you’d like. You can quote any book on earth, you could learn from anyone for all I care, but the Torah is different: it contains divine wisdom. The eternal truth. Human knowledge keeps on changing. A few hundred years ago, people thought that the Earth was flat. That’s how much you can trust science.”
The Belgian grimaced even more broadly. Science was everything to him. But I was wondering, what if I couldn’t trust science either, what if a paradigm could be overcome by another paradigm always? That sounded post-postmodern to me. If the boundaries became so blurry, where did rationality end, what was reality and how could one define normalcy?
“If you don’t believe in G-d, at least give a little credit to the wisdom our rabbis accumulated through the centuries. That’s what you owe to your elders,” said the Surfer.
But the Belgian just shook his head. He hated this discourse. I knew he worried that if you let go of control, you became easily manipulated and that was that: you were brainwashed. I also didn’t understand why we should give any credit to some medieval rabbis, but I remembered my Grandpa Singer. How different my life would have been if the Nazis hadn’t have deprived me of him. Of course until now we’d only trusted ourselves, and not our parents or teachers, above all not any sort of rabbinical authorities. On the other hand, there was nothing wrong with thinking once in a while about something radically different. After all, growing up was all about finding our own voice.
“If you were born a Jew and you are in the Holy City, you at least owe it to yourself to listen to this one lecture. Of course, if a piece of your soul wasn’t looking for this, G-d wouldn’t have led you here anyway,” said the rabbi. The Belgian shook his legs nervously. “By the way Moses was the most humble man on earth, the prophet of prophets. He had experienced G-d on the highest level and his radiance grew so strong that he became like the sun. He had to wear a mask because most people couldn’t even lay eyes on him. Can you imagine how great G-d is, if we can’t even glance at a person who has seen him?”
Maybe Darth Vader, Moses, and the Wizard of Oz hid themselves behind masks because they represented something larger than themselves. But if G-d was an energy field, why did it matter if we lived a religious life? I was wondering.
“Adam is a prototype—like the endless ocean, every human being’s soul is contained in something like water drops. There are 600,000 Jewish souls on earth, and we receive pieces of it. We came to this world to elevate our own little soul-drop by perfecting our world.”
“How would you respond to this statement by the Hungarian poet, Attila József: ‘A sick world forces its sickening philosophies on me and then labels me sick,’” asked the Belgian.
“We need to heal the soul of the universe together; everyone has to take part in it. Healing should begin with ourselves. We need to reach into the most painful, sore spots and clean out the pus.”
This sounded brutal. It would be easier to stay on the surface, living happily without troubling ourselves much, like Flóra did. Why did I always have to associate myself with losers from Thomas Mann and Herman Hesse novels instead of ones that are all right? If I were at least an artist, writer, or philosopher—but I was just a useless little psychology student.
A girl in blue lipstick, wearing an anarchist T-shirt, asked in a hoarse voice what I’d wanted to bring up next: “What makes people so sad that they don’t even want to live any longer?”
The rabbi’s eyes were filled with compassion, and his words touched me, like a long-awaited hug. “The divine plan is like a carpet whose pattern we can only see from below. We can’t understand reality in its entirety. When someone is lost in their own little universe, they can’t grasp the larger patterns. Depressed people don’t see that the world and G-d are unconditionally benevolent. They can’t see the forest for the trees: even if some moments seem unbearably hard, you can’t give up, because there is a happy end. Everything has a reason, and everything bad has a core of goodness in it. That’s what the note in our right hand pocket reminds us.”
“That’s bullshit. I can’t believe that all this misery in the world serves a higher good. Victims of the Holocaust wouldn’t buy into your explanation,” said the girl with the blue lipstick, and the Belgian nodded approvingly.
“There are many different ways to get closer to G-d. The wise learn Torah and reflect. But the foolish learn lessons by screwing up over and over again. If people get sick or suffer from tragedies, they fall out of their routines. They are forced to reflect and get a chance to wake up and learn the lessons that they should have known better before. Similar situations keep on recurring until people do what they are supposed to do. So ‘Why is G-d punishing me?’ isn’t the right question. One should wonder, ‘How can I turn this experience into a tool for improving myself?’”
According to his philosophy, my suicide attempt and acid reflux were good things deep down. Maybe they were warnings for me to finally start living my own life. But I didn’t see any real alternatives out there. I looked at the Belgian, but he was talking to a pothead.
“Surfer, your theory doesn’t explain the death of innocent kids,” said the guitar player. I started feeling sorry for the rabbi.
“How can you stand all these loudmouths?” I whispered to the rebbetzin.
“We love all of G-d’s creatures: we don’t judge a Jew according to his behavior, but by what he has the potential to become,” she said kindly. It was a corny sentiment, but it did touch me that there were people out there who were able to accept and love everybody.
“They must be motivated to do this for financial gain,” said the Belgian to me in Hungarian. I didn’t understand the logic of their actions. I also couldn’t believe that G-d was good. Maybe the whole world was just a bad joke and our lives were pointless. We were just creating all these theories to find a meaning of the imperceptible.
“We need to do what our karma dictates,” said the rabbi with tiredness in his voice.
“So we believe in reincarnation?” I was stunned.
“Sure we do,” said the rabbi, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Every nation has a task: Israel, the Torah, and the Holy Land are inseparable. But as long as there are so many self-hating Jews who don’t realize they need to keep G-d’s commandments and return to their ancestors’ land, there will not be peace here. Our suffering will end only when we realize, we are ‘am segula’, G-d’s chosen people. ‘Segula’ means triangle—its sides consist of the Land, the People, and the Torah. When the upper and lower worlds meet, the Star of David is created. The star also symbolizes G-d’s dominion over the world. According to the Kabbalah, the two triangles also symbolize human duality: good and bad, spirituality and physicality. The triangle pointing upward stands for our good deeds influencing heaven above, while the triangles pointing downwards symbolizes blessings filtering through.”
I was saturated with new information, and by the end I could not follow much. After this long lecture, the group sang an Eastern European–sounding niggun. The guy with the guitar played while the girl with the blue lipstick beat along on bongo drums. The song was like a mantra, drawing us into its world. The others had closed their eyes, but when I looked at the rabbi, he seemed almost like a transformed man. Even if I couldn’t understand all his words, filtering them through my heart by singing along gave them meaning on a much higher level. “It is only with the heart that one can see correctly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” I cherished the Fox’s words from The Little Prince. After the song the guy with the marijuana leaf necklace turned to us and said, “Man, I just understood what oneness means. Creation’s purpose is one, because G-d is perfectly good. Evil just seems like evil, because all is one. That’s why everything is good.”
“Wow, that’s really deep,” said the girl with the blue lipstick, and the others seemed to agree. The Belgian and I looked at each other and laughed. My soul was happy: no matter how weird this whole group had been, I was definitely feeling great here.
We took Jonathan up on his offer and moved our stuff that day to the Surfing Rabbi’s. Girls and boys had to sleep in separate buildings, but I didn’t think it was such a big sacrifice for a few days in exchange for this once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
